October Book Club of the Month
This month’s Sutter Home Book Club selection is The Hummingbird byStephen P. Kiernan, author of the acclaimed novel The Curiosity. The Hummingbird is a compelling and moving story of compassion, courage and redemption.
Deborah Birch is a seasoned Hospice nurse whose daily work requires courage and compassion. But her skills and experience are tested in new and dramatic ways when her easygoing husband, Michael, returns from his third deployment to Iraq haunted by nightmares, anxiety and rage. She is determined to help him heal and to restore the tender, loving marriage they once had.
At the same time, Deborah’s primary patient is Barclay Reed, a retired history professor and expert in the Pacific Theater of World War II, whose career ended in academic scandal. Alone in the world, the embittered professor is dying. As Barclay begrudgingly comes to trust Deborah, he tells her stories from that long-ago war, which help her find a way to help her husband battle his demons.
Told with piercing empathy and heartbreaking realism, The Hummingbird is a masterful story of loving commitment, service to country, and absolution through wisdom and forgiveness.
About the Author:
Stephen P. Kiernan is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. During his more than twenty years as a journalist, he has won numerous awards, including the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Award, the Edward Willis Scripps Award for Distinguished Service to the First Amendment and the George Polk Award. Kiernan is the author of The Curiosity, his first novel, as well as two nonfiction books. He lives in Vermont with his two sons.
