The Birds of Opulence

The Birds of Opulence

by Crystal Wilkinson
The Birds of Opulence

The Birds of Opulence

by Crystal Wilkinson

Paperback(Reprint)

$19.95 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
    Choose Expedited Shipping at checkout for delivery by Wednesday, April 3
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

From the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of Blackberries, Blackberries and Water Street comes an astonishing new novel. A lyrical exploration of love and loss, The Birds of Opulence centers on several generations of women in a bucolic southern black township as they live with and sometimes surrender to madness.

The Goode-Brown family, led by matriarch and pillar of the community Minnie Mae, is plagued by old secrets and embarrassment over mental illness and illegitimacy. Meanwhile, single mother Francine Clark is haunted by her dead, lightning-struck husband and forced to fight against both the moral judgment of the community and her own rebellious daughter, Mona. The residents of Opulence struggle with vexing relationships to the land, to one another, and to their own sexuality. As the members of the youngest generation watch their mothers and grandmothers pass away, they live with the fear of going mad themselves and must fight to survive.

Crystal Wilkinson offers up Opulence and its people in lush, poetic detail. It is a world of magic, conjuring, signs, and spells, but also of harsh realities that only love—and love that's handed down—can conquer. At once tragic and hopeful, this captivating novel is a story about another time, rendered for our own.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780813174990
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Publication date: 02/23/2018
Series: Kentucky Voices
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 216
Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Crystal Wilkinson is the author of Blackberries, Blackberries, winner of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature, and Water Street, a finalist for both the UK's Orange Prize for Fiction and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. The winner of the 2008 Denny Plattner Award in Poetry from Appalachian Heritage magazine and the Sallie Bingham Award from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, she serves as Appalachian Writer-in-Residence at Berea College and teaches in the Spalding low residency MFA in Creative Writing Program.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Wilkinson has written a beautiful and tragic intergenerational family epic that is as charged and challenging as it is tremendously moving." — Julianna Baggott, author of Pure

Julianna Baggott

"Wilkinson has written a beautiful and tragic intergenerational family epic that is as charged and challenging as it is tremendously moving."

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews