Kobbie Alamo brings her lyrical sense of language and writing style to this contemporary cross-cultural set in the Smoky Mountains.

Bernadette “Birdy” Comlin and Jack White are childhood friends raised in ramshackle cabins near the top of Garrelli Hill where the Hornbuckle Creek bubbles from the clay for its trickling descent down the mountains. They have shared the joys and struggles of childhood in the Appalachian south. Birdy is a white girl with a magical singing voice brought up by her deaf grandmother, and Jack is an athletically talented black boy whose father is a snake-preacher. Though Birdy and Jack embrace their differences, others in their small Smoky Mountain town do not. Despite the racism and dark family secrets that threaten to tear them apart, Birdy and Jack have forged a deep abiding bond. 

But when a violent event separates them, Birdy finds herself lost and far away from the country home she swore she’d never leave. Temporarily unable to speak yet still able to sing, Birdy’s lively youth has become a sad and silent adulthood. Her unexplained disappearance haunts Jack for years. Finally, through the redemptive power of love and music, Birdy and Jack find each other again. The demons of their past must be faced together in order to find their future.


". . . Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night . . ."
—The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran