Review: The Days When Birds Come Back by Deborah Reed

The Days When Birds Come Back by Deborah Reed

The Days When Birds Come Back is the story of June Byrne, who returns to her grandparents' home on the Oregon coast, in recovery and trying to recover from her broken marriage. She hires Jamison Winters to restore the bungalow, not knowing that his life is also a wreck.

June is not an easy heroine. On the one hand, she went through a lot as a kid and is damaged, still fragile, and sympathetic. On the other, she can be prickly, and she acts pretty nuts. In one of my favorite scenes, she overshares with Jamison, shouting to him over the phone that she is a “dry drunk.” It’s an expression I know well because I’ve worked with many recovering alcoholics, both as clients and co-workers. One of my former law partners (may he rest in peace) used to joke/not joke about himself that you can take the liquor out of a fruitcake, but you still have a fruitcake.

The book hit me hard because June reminds me so much of so many real people. Reed captures what it’s like to be around a former drinker trying to stop – that sense that what is going on on the outside is just a half step out of sync with what’s going on inside. Reed lets the story unfold without forcing June to be better than she is. And it is that tension in the pacing that makes The Days When Birds Come Back such a beautiful story of grief and kindness and love.


NOTES

Read my interview of Deborah Reed.

The Days When Birds Come Back, is Reed's fourth novel. She has written three previous novels: Olivay, Things We Set on Fire, and Carry Yourself Back to Me, and two popular thrillers under the pen name Audrey Braun. Deborah splits her time between Germany, where she co-directs the Black Forest Writing Seminars at the University of Freiburg, and her home at the Oregon coast.

Review: The Only Woman in the Room: The Norma Paulus Story

BOOK REVIEW

The Only Woman in the Room: The Norma Paulus Story (OSU Press, 2018)

According to family history, Norma Paulus was born in 1933 on the kitchen table in their Nebraska farmhouse, and brought to Oregon as a toddler when her family lost everything in the Dust Bowl. Although she didn’t go to college, she worked as a legal secretary in Salem, Oregon’s state capital, and then went to law school where she graduated with honors.

Paulus had a wide-ranging career in state politics. When she was elected Secretary of State in 1976, she was the first women elected to statewide office in Oregon. As Secretary of State, she had to contend with the voting fraud crisis provoked by the Rajneeshee cult in the 1980s. Later, she was nationally lauded for her k-12 education reforms Superintendent of Public Instruction in the 1990s. Paulus showed boundless energy for new challenges, with both a vision for the big picture and a grasp of tiny details.

Her new biography, The Only Woman in the Room: The Norma Paulus Story is a collaborative effort among Pat McCord Amacher, Gail Wells, and Norma Paulus herself, mostly in the form of hours of oral history she recorded in 2010. Amacher and Wells interviewed friends, colleagues, and family members, and had access to the Paulus papers archived at Willamette University and the Oregon Historical Society. These included everything from notes passed by legislators on the floor of the House, to personal correspondence, election profiles, photographs, and Rajneesh court documents.

With sexual harassment and #metoo in the news so much these days, it is fascinating to read the story of a woman who launched her political career in 1969. Paulus said she never considered sexism an issue until she ran for office the first time and it smacked her square in the face. But what shows in her story is what a strong, unassailable sense of her own worth she always had. Paulus had a confidence in her ability to get things done on her own that seemed to keep her invulnerable to men in power.

Norma Paulus's story shows a woman making a real difference in a man’s world without compromising her ideals, passions, or goals. This is a history that should appeal to feminists in any era.

NOTES

The Norma Paulus Story is part of OSU Press's Women and Politics in the Pacific Northwest series. So far, the series also includes books on Betty Roberts, Barbara Roberts, and Avel Louise Gordly.