The Sparrow's Last Call

Eight-year-old Lily Marsh is fighting pneumonia from her bedroom in a small Ohio town, and she has decided that the sparrow outside her window is the most important creature in the world. She named him Henry-after O. Henry, the writer of surprise endings-because he stayed in the elm tree after all his fledglings flew away. She has tracked his morning song in her sketchbook. And she is certain, with the certainty only a sick child can have, that as long as Henry keeps singing, she is going to be okay.
When Henry goes quiet, so does Lily. What unfolds is a quiet story about the things that hold us up when we cannot hold ourselves-a steady mother who keeps watch through the night, a best friend who announces the impossible with complete confidence, a house-call doctor who balances cold medicine against warm hope, and an elderly neighbor named Vera who has spent seventy-one years learning to pay attention to what's needed and then doing it.
The Sparrow's Last Song is a novella about illness and recovery, about a small bird who doesn't know he is extraordinary, and about the way ordinary people-neighbors, friends, strangers who bring soup-become a net under us when we fall. It is a story for anyone who has ever been the sick child in the bed, the parent in the chair, or the neighbor who found just the right thing to do. Community saves us.
Sometimes it sounds like a sparrow. Sometimes it sounds like something close enough.