Peeking Between the Pages

...escape into the pages of a good book

Guest Post & Giveaway with Rebecca Rasmussen, author of The Bird Sisters

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I am beyond excited to welcome Rebecca Rasmussen, author of The Bird Sisters, to Peeking Between the Pages today. Not only is Rebecca an amazing author but she is also one of the friendliest and sweetest ladies I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know in a long time and I’m pleased to call her a friend. Her debut novel The Bird Sisters released on April 12/11 and it is such a beautiful novel (my review). You always know you’ve read a wonderful book when it is still slipping in and out of your memory and you wish you were back within it’s pages. Today Rebecca is going to share with us The Story of The Bird Sisters…

The story of The Bird Sisters belongs to my grandmother Kathryn.

Until I was a young woman, I knew very little about her even though I’d spent a great deal of time with her and had even lived with her at one point. I knew that her father was an extremely talented golfer and her mother was lovely and dark, and that my grandmother thought I looked a little like her. I knew that my grandmother tromped through fields and streams when she was a girl, ruining whatever dress her mother had ironed for her, and that she fell asleep midway through television shows with salt crackers on her lap when she was old. I knew that she lost both of her parents when she was a teenager and that she never quite recovered from that loss. But it wasn’t until after my grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer, went through the treatments, and went into remission that I got to know her better.

In 2000, she and my mother moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, where I was living at the time, waiting out those last precious months before I went to graduate school. My mother worked a lot. My grandmother and I didn’t. Every morning, we’d go to breakfast together in Old Town, and it was over our first cups of mountain coffee that questions about her history started filtering into my mind and answers started flowing from her lips. She ended up telling me the story of her parents, their heartbreaks and their joys, as though I were a friend instead of her granddaughter. And then one day she showed me a picture of them at a county fair when they were very young. My great-grandfather Bert and my great-grandmother Tracy were standing under a cardboard moon, looking at each other with a kind of uncontained love that was rare for photographs of that time. I kept measuring their expressions against the story my grandmother had told me. I kept wondering: where did that love go?

A few months later, I went off to graduate school. A month after that, my grandmother fell down in a parking lot and discovered, after many painful tests, that she had a brain tumor. After she passed away that fall, my mother sent me her journals, which we never knew she’d kept. I read them and what I found was indeed heartbreaking, but also something else I couldn’t put a name to.

“This year I’d like to forget Christmas,” she wrote in one entry. “I’d like to throw off all the old yokes and start something entirely new.”

I wasn’t truly hooked until I read this one, a list, which was so sweet and true:
“Things I’ve Always Liked, by Kathryn Sturm –” which began with “the scent of cotton drying in the sun, mud on my feet, honeysuckle twirling up porch railings, my mother,” and ended with “the crinkle of newspaper, the slam of a screen door!”

What struck me most about her list was that she wrote it when she was 72.

Once I found my way out of missing her terribly and into wanting to honor her (eight years, a husband, and a baby later), the first draft of The Bird Sisters took me about seven months to write.

But, oh, the revisions that followed! The heartbreaks. The joys.
__________

Thank you so much for this beautiful and heartfelt guest post Rebecca! It’s wonderful that you have such special memories of your grandmother. I’m positive she would have loved your novel!
__________

About the Book (from Rebecca’s website)

When a bird flies into a window in Spring Green, Wisconsin, sisters Milly and Twiss get a visit. Twiss listens to the birds’ heartbeats, assessing what she can fix and what she can’t, while Milly listens to the heartaches of the people who’ve brought them. The two sisters have spent their lives nursing people and birds back to health.

But back in the summer of 1947, they knew nothing about trying to mend what had been accidentally broken. Milly was known as a great beauty with emerald eyes and Twiss was a brazen wild child who never wore a dress or did what she was told. That was the summer their golf pro father got into an accident that cost him both his swing and his charm, and their mother, the daughter of a wealthy jeweler, finally admitted their hardscrabble lives wouldn’t change. It was the summer their priest, Father Rice, announced that God didn’t exist and ran off to Mexico, and a boy named Asa finally caught Milly’s eye. And, most unforgettably, it was the summer their cousin Bett came down from a town called Deadwater and changed the course of their lives forever.

I just love the Book Trailer…

About the Author (from Rebecca’s website)


I live in St. Louis, Missouri with my husband and daughter, where I teach writing and literature at Fontbonne University. In addition to writing, I’m reading some wonderful nonfiction books these days (My Life in France by Julia Child is my favorite of the bunch!) and I’m training for a half-marathon this fall. I also love to bake pies. Raspberry. Blueberry. Peach. Yum. This is only miraculous because I essentially grew up in a microwave. Because of this, I am interested in all things old and outdated. I love to think about hope chests and house dresses. Sideboards are big ones, too. At the end of the day, though, when it’s 105 outside in St. Louis, I’m pretty thankful for my thermal windows and air conditioning. Still…I’m always on the brink of trying to put up jam like my great grandmother used to do.

Find Rebecca on…

…her website
…her blog
…Facebook
…Twitter
…Buy The Bird Sisters on Amazon.com or Amazon.ca

GIVEAWAY DETAILS

I have 2 copies of The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen to share with you! To enter…

  • For 1 entry leave me a comment with an email address to contact you should you win.
  • For 2 entries follow my blog. If you already do, thank you, and please let me know in your comment so I can pass the extra entry on to you.
  • For 3 entries blog or tweet this giveaway and spread the word!

This giveaway will be open to US & Canadian residents only (no PO boxes) and I will be drawing for the winners on Saturday, May 14/11. Good luck to you all!

© 2010, Darlene of Peeking Between the Pages. All Rights Reserved. If you’re reading this on a site other than Peeking Between the Pages or Darlene’s Feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.

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Comments

  1. Lovely guest post, Rebecca. Brought tears to my eyes because I was close to both my grandmothers and still miss them.

  2. Thanks for the giveaway! This looks like a wonderful book.

    susanna dot pyatt at student dot rcsnc dot org

    I'm an old GFC follower.

  3. Darlene, this was a beautiful post, and like you, I loved the trailer. The old black and white snapshots are so much like those I've got in a cigar box in the closet. I'd love to read this book.
    Extra entry please – Google follower.
    lcbrower40(at)gmail(dot)com

  4. What a beautiful guest post. It does her grandmother such honor, and makes me pine for my grandmother (who I never got to have those kinds of conversations with). I loved that you shared this with us, and would love the chance to read the book. Please do enter me in your giveaway, Dar.

    zibilee(at)figearo(dot)net

    I am also a follower of your blog through google reader.

  5. What a lovely post. I always wondered about my grandmother's life and who her younger self was. This sounds like a great book.

    jgoffice(at)cox(dot)net

    I follow

  6. I had heard about the book and wanted to read it, but Ms. Rasmussen's post and short bio upped the ante. Please count me in the giveaway.
    And I follow you on google reader.
    cdirks(at)sbcglobal(dot)net

  8. What a nice post. I have heard good things about this book. Just put another one on my wishlist.
    I follow on GFC

    lizzi0915 at aol dot com

  9. I've heard so many wonderful things about this book, and so look forward to reading it. Thanks for the great post. I'm a gfc follower. (dogwood)

    dogwoodlane at suddenlink dot net

  10. Loved this guest post, and I'm going to call my 93-year-old gram when I get home from work!

    I'd love to be entered! I put the giveaway in my sidebar, and I follow through Google.

    diaryofaneccentric at hotmail dot com

  11. This is a beautiful and memorable post. Thanks for this great giveaway. saubleb(at)gmail(dot)com

  12. I enjoyed this special book review and would love to read this story. rojosho(at)hotmail(dot)com

  13. This sounds like a great story, I would love to read it.
    Thanks for the giveaway, and I follow.

  14. Wow, what a story! I know Rebecca's grandmother had to be quite a character with a great name like Kathryn! 🙂 No need to enter me.

  16. I love stories that come from family memories. Both of my grandmothers have passed away a long time ago but I have so many memories of both of them. I would love to win and read this book.

    CarolNWong(at)aol(dot)com

  17. I follow this blog with Facebook and an e-mail subscription.

    CarolNWong(at)aol(dot)com

  20. Wonderful giveaway!!! Thanks!

    I'm your GFC follower (EvieSeo)
    here's my mail: evieseo(at)gmail(dot)com

    🙂

  21. Have been reading about this book on many blogs, sounds like a great read!

    Am a faithful reader!
    ladybook21 at yahoo dot com

  29. I love this post, I can't wait to read this.
    I am a GFC follower and email subscriber

    faefever25(at)hotmail(dot)com

  30. The cover of this book reminds me of an Audubon drawing.
    pboylecharley(at)hotmail(dot)com

  31. This sounds like such a heart touching story. I would love to read it.

    lag110 at mchsi dot com

  37. I'm here~ I want a copy, it sounds like such a good book. And the cover is so nice!

    P.S. your post on Twitter has the incorrect web address. It just heads to an error page.

    My e-mail is designloved at mariajblack dot com

  42. This sounds like a wonderful novel! I look forward to reading it. What a touching post about the authors grandmother. I lost my grandmother last year and can understand their connection. She sounded like a special lady.

    I'd love to win a copy of this book!

    I'm a long time follower.

    redladysreadingroomATgmailDOTcom

  43. Sounds like a wonderful book and this website is great. Following you now on twitter! My email address is cool_beans2000 at hotmail.com

  44. Rebecca Rasmussen's guest post is beautiful and touching. It's no wonder The Bird Sisters is getting such wonderful reviews.

    Please enter me in your giveaway, Darlene.
    I follow your blog on GFC.

    Aimala127(at)gmail(dot)com

  52. What a great post and interview. I really want this one. I follow on Google reader/FC, and I've posted your giveaways in the sidebar on Tutu's Two Cents

    tbranco24 AT gmail DOT com

  57. Sounds like a beautiful story.

    I follow your blog 🙂

    quixoticdreamer(at)hotmail(dot)com

  58. Great post! Rebecca, are you planning on coming up to Iowa any time soon?
    I think this just sounds like such a touching story. Just beautiful!

    I follow you with email Dar.

    cjay (at) iavalley (dot) edu

  59. I read the review of this and it sounds like an interesting book.
    seknobloch(at)gmail(dot)com

  61. Lovely guest post and a nicely written review… I like stories which deal with relationships and emotions…. would love to read this book…

    +1: I also follow your blog

    – arch

    archanaskorner(at)gmail(dot)com

  65. Wonderful guest post! The best fiction is based on truth.

    I would love to read this book. I've posted this giveaway in my blog's sidebar.

    I am a follower. 🙂

    Thanks for hosting this, Darlene. I always find the best book giveaways here.

  66. I was just looking at this at the bookstore

    chocolate and croissants at yahoo . com

  74. This book sounds great! I can't wait to read stand would love towin a copy
    Meaghan_koci (at) yahoo (dot) com