Love stories seem simple but end up messy.<\/p>\n
They bring emotional baggage. They bring history. They bring love. They bring fear \u2013 both known and unknown. Everything that can go into a relationship can drive a love story. They can end in happiness or death. Yet they are the timeless plot that drives literature. Even when it\u2019s not the main story, there is inevitably a love interest, however superficial.<\/p>\n
But there is nothing superficial about the deep search for love in Shann Ray\u2019s \u201cWhere the Blackbirds Fly.\u201d It is love in all its complexities, all its pain.<\/p>\n
The Gonzaga University professor may teach forgiveness studies, but his study of love in this novel is unforgiving in its depth of discovery about the complexities of human relationships.<\/p>\n
It is difficult to tell too much about what are really five different novellas rolled into one book. There are so many twists and surprises unfolding in these pages, I do not want to give away anything. When I am reviewing a book, I do not read the cover notes, or the news releases that accompany the advance review copies. I do not read what others have said. I want to open the book and experience it without preconceptions, and let the author\u2019s words speak alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere the Blackbirds Fly\u201d rewards such an approach. Ray\u2019s writing is itself a joy to read. It has a rhythm to it that is musical, and a form that reminds me of a good jazz record the way it unfolds. It reminds me a lot of the first time I read Jack Kerouac.<\/p>\n
The book opens with John Sender, a former rodeo cowboy from Montana who settled into the world of high finance in Seattle. But he is a socially awkward guy who has not succeeded in love as he has in the banking world, where he shepherds people through mortgage loans as the gatekeeper to the dreams of home ownership \u2013 once a right of adulthood, now reserved for only the most successful. He is deeply in love with Samantha but he is not sure how to pursue it. Because she has a secret, buried deep within her, within her family. It may be the same secret that lies with his own mother and father. All families have secrets.<\/p>\n
Elias and Aurora are already married when we meet them, in and out of love, a path marriage sometimes follows. They harbor generational trauma buried deep within their Native upbringings, as they try to pay homage to their past while navigating the white present. They look successful on the outside, but struggle with what that says about them.<\/p>\n
\u201cNative peoples,\u201d Ray writes, \u201cthose of mixed race, those of mixed gender or sex, the traditionalists, the no-faither, the Native Christians, the Native anti-Christians, and atheists Elias had come to know in Seattle were all fallible deities trapped in the mind of America where non-Whiteness was not allowed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Phil and Alberta, and Gabriel and Angelica, have similar loves and losses, ghosts from generations past that haunt their happiness.<\/p>\n
All the couples have desperately separate and unique lives that are entwined together through business or their Montana roots. Each go about their business but are integral in how the others will succeed or not.<\/p>\n
\u201cBlackbirds\u201d is about a search for love and the need for community. None is promised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Love stories seem simple but end up messy. They bring emotional baggage. They bring history. They bring love.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-470540","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}