A debut novel already destined to be a book club favorite. тАЬWith its deft interweaving of psychological complexity and riveting narrative momentum, with its gorgeous prose and poetic justice, The Gravity of Birds is about sibling rivalry, tragedies, and resurrections. And itтАЩs irresistibly exquisiteтАЭ (San Francisco Chronicle).
Forty-four years after the brilliant young painter, Thomas Bayber, first meets Alice and Natalie Kessler, Bayber unveils a never-before-seen work, Kessler SistersтАФa provocative painting depicting the young Thomas, Alice, and Natalie. Bayber asks Dennis Finch, an art history professor, and Stephen Jameson, an eccentric young art authenticator, to sell the painting. But their task becomes more complicated when the artist requires that they first locate Alice and Natalie, who seem to have disappeared.
Told in alternating chapters that weave revelations about the sistersтАЩ past with clues Finch and Jameson discover in the present, this story sets three characters on a collision course with their histories, showing how families tear themselves apart and then try to bind themselves together again, not always creating the same fabric. The Gravity of Birds тАЬcombines the drama of warring sisters, the mystery of a missing painting, and the sorrow of lost love into a haunting elegy that willтАжleave you breathlessтАЭ (Tiffany Baker, author of The Little Giant of Aberdeen County).