Broken Wing

Broken Wing is the story of one man’s love for birds and efforts to save a rusty blackbird that can’t fly south for the winter. The author, David Budbill, worked closely with Cummings in order to finish the book before he died in October of this year. The publisher enlisted local artist Donald Saaf, who illustrated the pages with stunning black and white collages that bring the book to life. The book is appropriate for young adult readers and adults.

Set in the remote mountains to the north, Broken Wing is an allegorical tale about a rusty blackbird with a broken wing who can't fly and therefore is trapped in the inhospitable north country for the winter, and a man, known only as The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains, who lives a solitary life of nurturing attentiveness, simple kindness, and passionate emotional intensity. Broken Wing is the story of how these two different lives come together. A story of loneliness, survival, tenacity, and will, Broken Wing is also about music and race and what it is like to be a minority in a strange place. A story of the natural world and the wonder of birds' lives, and of one man's deep connection to them, Broken Wing becomes a song of praise for the cycle of the seasons and a meditation on the reality of dreams and the dreamlike quality of reality. It is also the story of one individual black man told from outside the usual stereotypes about African-American males, which is a perspective seldom seen in America literature. Told with simple, dignified prose Broken Wing takes on the timeless, mythic aura of a folktale.

In Broken Wing, David Budbill has composed a monumental love letter to the natural world, an astute and minutely observed portrait of the avian inhabitants of a mysterious hillside orchard. The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains, a reclusive keeper of the earth whose soul is devoted to one injured rusty blackbird, embodies a narrative voice compelled to witness, in the rhythm and brutality of the seasons, the intimate patterns of the wild creatures surrounding his home. Budbill’s lyrical storytelling effortlessly transports the reader into his realm with a rare and poetic beauty.