The Lord God Bird

by Russell Hill

Fiction. THE LORD GOD BIRD is a startling novella filled with dark images of America in the South in 1949. Jake Hamrick, a 19-year-old who has been obsessed since childhood with the Ivory-billed... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 192935553X
• ISBN13: 9781929355532
• Release Date: June 2009
• Publisher: Caravel Mystery Books
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

A ledgend and a vanishing wilderness

Don't pick it up if you don't have time to finish it in one reading. It will grab you from the first. It is a short book, but one that you will find yourself thinking about long after you've finished it. I read it in two hours. I've seen many pileated woodpeckers and have heard legends about the ivory bill. Would that they had only survived!

It Stays with You

I read this book more than a month ago, over the course of two days. In the time since, I keep thinking about it. Spare, precise, full of imagery, the story haunts me. Certainly it is cinematic but it operates on a much more complex level. It's more than a summation of its images. A sadness pervades the work, a sadness that doesn't fade. The themes on love and loss and grief and violence are all handled with sensitivity. I think it's an exceptional book; one worth re-reading, which I plan to do soon.

Unique page-turner

I usually read before bed because it puts me to sleep. . . almost without fail. . . no matter what I'm reading. This book kept me up WAY past my bedtime. From the first line I was hooked. This story is beautifully told and expertly crafted. So nice to read something "off the beaten path" -- a novella that's completely different from standard suspense thrillers. It would be especially satisfying to people with knowledge and appreciation of the Chicago area and the Louisiana landscape.

In Search of the Lord God Bird

In The Lord God Bird, Russell Hill juxtaposes darkness and light as he brings his characters, full-fledged off the page. The story follows the quest of a young man, Jake Hamrick, and his tiny girlfriend, Robin, as they search the Louisiana swamps and bayous for the near-extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Devoted to helping Jake realize his dream, Robin, frail and birdlike herself, offers to dress as the rare woodpecker, and climb high in the trees to call out the bird's mating call. They make her a cape of crow's feathers, covered her body in white clay, while turning her hair into a red crest. Robin climbs a tall tree and begins calling out to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. What happens from there keeps you attached to the book until the very last page. This is not just a mystery. This is laced with passionate love, hatred, fear, obsession and a haunting touch of the magic of the bayous. Sometimes poetry, sometimes clear narrative, it accurately portrays the strange and unpredictable behaviors of the era--of any era, and it led me so deeply into its story, it left me stunned. With seeming simplicity, Hill, without melodrama or didacticism, left this reader more critically aware of something unnamable.

a great read!

The Lord God Bird is a startling narrative that takes the reader into the Deep South in 1949 in search of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. The protagonist, a nineteen year old, and his girlfriend become enmeshed in a noir mystery that is entangled with racism, violence and passion. Hill writes a lyrical prose that is a combination of Faulkner mixed with Cormac McCarthy. If you pick this book up, you won't be able to put it down. The prose is lyrical and the characters will haunt you. A sweet, sad read...and worth it!