A Family Storm

Birds of Paradise

In the tropical paradise that is Miami, Avis and Brian Muir are still haunted by the disappearance of their ineffably beautiful daughter, Felice, who ran away when she was thirteen. Now, after five years of modeling tattoos, skateboarding, clubbing, and sleeping in a squat house or on the beach, Felice is about to turn eighteen. Her family—Avis, an exquisitely talented pastry chef; Brian, a corporate real estate attorney; and her brother, Stanley, the proprietor of Freshly Grown, a trendy food market—will each be forced to confront their anguish, loss, and sense of betrayal. Meanwhile, Felice must reckon with the guilty secret that drove her away, and must face her fear of losing her family and her sense of self forever.


This multilayered novel about a family that comes apart at the seams—and finds its way together again—is totally involving and deeply satisfying, a glorious feast of a book.



Jackie says:
"The Muir family has been falling apart for years, though the last five have been the most notable because those are the years without Felice.
 
At the age of 12, Felice chose to be a street child, not for the rebellion that her parents and the police thought, but as a self-devised punishment for something she was never able to explain to anyone else.  Her father, Brian, and her brother, Stanley, write her off with the "we don't negotiate with terrorists" mentality.  Her mother, Avis, mourns and creates fantasies of sugar and flour that has made her artisan bakery a success among Miami's corporate elite yet aren't enough to rebuild her broken heart.  Brian's distance from his wife has led to other discontents and longings at his office, where he is a corporate lawyer for a huge development firm.  He finds himself suddenly surrounded by temptations that begin to drive him mad.  Stanley, who once was his mother's shadow in the kitchen until her jealousy and distraction pushed him away, is now busy with his organic food co-op and the rising costs of everything as Florida grows people and condos and concrete.  Birds of Paradise follows these four characters in the few months prior to Hurricane Katrina, the familial storm nearly as powerful as the tropical one headed their way. 

This book is a powerful story of the connections and complications of family and the ability to reinvent ourselves over and over again that makes the Muir family seem like old friends as the last pages turn."