Fall of the Birds

A new novella by acclaimed author Bradford Morrow about a man who tracks an inexplicable plague of bird deaths, and the mystery's profound effect on his family.


Hundreds of red-winged blackbirds are discovered scattered, lifeless, around a greenhouse in Warwick, New York. Heaps of common grackles litter the fields of a farm upstate near Stone Ridge. And in Manhattan, a Washington Square restaurant is forced to close its doors when a flock of pigeons inexplicably dies on the sidewalks out front. From Pennsylvania to Maine, birds are falling from the sky en masse-and nobody can figure out why.

An insurance claims adjuster and avid birder is one of the first to recognize that something is wrong. His stepdaughter, Caitlin, has also noticed-their common interest in birds is one of the few things they share these days, since her mother died of cancer just six months ago. As they travel the Northeast together to investigate the ominous deaths, a bond forms that might prove strong enough to mend their broken family.

Fall of the Birds is a moving story of a haunting near-future and a tribute to the power of love that can survive even the most harrowing of circumstances.

Bradford Morrow is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, editor, and author of children's books. He grew up in Colorado and traveled extensively before settling in New York and launching the renowned literary journal Conjunctions. His novel The Almanac Branch was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award , and for Trinity Fields, Morrow was the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Academy Award in Literature. He has garnered numerous other accolades for his fiction, including O. Henry and Pushcart prizes, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship. Morrow is a professor of literature and Bard Center Fellow at Bard College.