‘Starling Days’: Featured Fiction from Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
In today’s edition of featured fiction—curated by our own Carolyn Quimby—we present an excerpt from Starling Days by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, out today from The Overlook Press.
Publishers Weekly called the book a “bleak and eloquent novel,” adding that “Readers willing to brave the darkness will find a worthy, nuanced portrait of a woman’s struggle for self-determination amid mental illness.” And, in its starred review, Kirkus called the novel “Poetic and understated…Complex and resonant.”
Chapter 1
August
She wasn’t expecting the bridge to shudder. It was too big for trembling. Cars hissed from New York to New Jersey over its wide back. That August had been hot, 96° Fahrenheit hot. Heat softened the dollar bills and clung to the quarters and dimes that passed from sticky hand to sticky hand.
It was night and the air had cooled but humidity still hung in a
