Revelations from the Lowcountry: A Review of Tim Bryant’s THE BIRD IN YOUR HEART
Tim Bryant’s recently released novel, The Bird in Your Heart, is a beautifully conceived and tightly woven chronicle of the geography, traditions, and superstitions of the South Carolina Lowcountry; generational expectations; family; friendship; racial barriers and bridges; good whiskey; the persistent lure of sailing across the open sea; and the therapeutic value of bird watching. If you’re thinking that’s a lot, you’re right, but that ain’t all. Included also are a mysteriously missing father, divorce, wedding, Gullah mysticisms, a sweet-running Jaguar automobile, a battered Land Rover, spoiled rich people, a beautiful sailboat, an epic storm, an explosion and fire, and a just-right dose of romantic love. One may ask how Bryant pulls it all off. I’m not sure, but I suspect Lowcountry magic . . . or there’s the more likely explanation that his success is due to masterful craftsmanship.
The art of weaving together various plot points, scenes, and characters requires talent and an overriding desire to get things right. Because Tim Bryant possesses these traits in abundance, the reader glides easily through the chapters, eager to see what happens next, even though the novel doesn’t rely on cheap suspense and cliffhangers. It’s all in the balance: Bryant in this regard matches the best of the plate-spinning, sword juggling, unicycle riders of the literary world. Jane Smiley, Jodi Picoult, and Richard Russo come to mind. I’m sure you can think of your own favorite authors who can explore several narrative arcs in the same novel without the book becoming too plot heavy.
Plate spinning and juggling require a solid foundation on which to distribute the weight. This is where careful scene construction comes into play. Consider this description of an Edisto Island landmark, Rupert Wright’s bait shop:
. . . I could see him as he always was: on the porch of his bait shop . . . rocking in his chair, looking to be asleep, but not. He was as black and hard as coal and his hair was like the white ash that appears when coal begins to heat up. I always thought of him as the oldest person alive because his appearance made it seem so. Yet . . . he never seemed to age further. . . . Visiting Rupert’s store was a fork in the road decision, with consequences large and small. . . . You had to willingly surrender the reassurances of good, county-ordained pavement to accept the consequences of loose gravel over oyster shells and sand. A right-hand turn then another then another, then a left and another right. Woods . . . mudflats . . . scrublands . . . not much else. At about the time you’re uneasy enough to consider turning back, Rupert’s hand-painted signs appear at intervals along the way, announcing “ICE COLD GRAPE SODA!” “POTTED MEAT!” and “Worms and Crickets Just Ahead!” as if tidings of great joy. Then it hits you that you’re in deep, deeper than you’ll ever know.
Rupert and his disheveled store—replete with fishing gear, canned potted meat, soft drinks, boiled peanuts, yams from the garden, comic books, toilet paper, and most anything else a person in that neck of the woods might need—figures heavily in the novel as a place of insight, point of reference, an avenue for comfort, and sanctuary for clear thinking.
Jack Hamilton, the novel’s protagonist and narrator, has been away from Edisto for a long time. Upon his first trip back to Rupert’s store, he’s filled with waves of nostalgia. He has escaped a bad marriage to a spoiled rich girl and an unsatisfying seven years of serving as a senior executive in her father’s ad agency. Now he’s leaving Atlanta behind, the posh Buckhead apartment and his precarious perch among Atlanta’s elite society. He is ready for a fresh start and finally to embark on his lifelong dream of sailing the open seas.
He arrives back in Edisto, where he grew up, to find that some things have changed while others have not. The birds are still there. In fact the novel opens with a Boat-Tailed Grackle flying high over the island, “above marshlands and swamps, across small struggling farms, and narrow, rough-edged roads disappearing between old oaks. It swooped in low for a closer look at tidy white cottages where clothes hung on lines like dots and dashes . . . and then soared farther out to where the few old plantation homes remained, some freshly painted, others desecrated by the seasons: from airless summer heat to shivery winter drafts and, in between, salty storms blowing in from the sea.”
The grounds and old plantation house where he’d grown up were largely the same, at least to the casual observer, but Jack soon discovered, after an uncharacteristic plea for help from his mother, that the old place was “falling down” around her. The mother’s health, particularly her vision, was also in decline. Jack wasn’t prepared for this. He needed a place for rest and quiet reflection as he envisioned the sailboat he’d buy with the settlement money from the divorce and severance from his father-in-law’s firm. He’d been paid a considerable sum to basically go away, and that’s what he’d planned to do, still planned to do until he received another round of bad news from his mother’s banker: her money was all gone. Now Jack’s dreams were in jeopardy. Would he “man up” and do the right thing, or would his selfish desires get the better of him.
In making choices for his mother and himself, Jack becomes torn and entangled. The realization that the path to freedom will not be found entirely through his own efforts but through the surprising behavior of those he loves—along with some unexpected twists of fate—comes hard. Will the nagging questions of his childhood be resolved? Will his hopes and dreams—at least some of them—be realized? In reading The Bird in Your Heart, you’ll accompany Jack on this rewarding ride through misadventures, false starts, and revelations. Bonuses include learning about Lowcountry life, bird watching, and perhaps a thing or two about yourself.
