Red Bird

In Native American culture, the Red Bird is a 'seer' or messenger from another realm. In Christianity, when a cardinal appears, angels are near. In BA Crisp's remarkable first novel, a Red Bird means redemption; for your sins, for anyone you've loved and lost, or from a secret you hope to keep. It's 1984 and Samantha Ryan Blake--human trafficking victim, unruly foster child--sees things: murder, crime...and sometimes...otherworldly 'beings'. She doesn't have a family. Not since her mother was institutionalized and her father went missing ten years ago in Vietnam. What she does have is a secret. Now she's been made an offer--to receive 'special tutoring' by a British couple-- on the grounds of a heavily guarded American nuclear reactor testing facility. Two facts seem certain: She faces prison if she refuses the offer--and she needs help. Sam's court file paints her as a promiscuous teenage thief with a high IQ--until Bennie, a very strange boy also living behind the gates, tells her she's not the "person" she thinks she is. To save herself and Earth, she's forced to embark on a personal and perilous journey that uncovers long-buried secrets about the world she thought she knew--secrets that stretch across generations and the universe, all the way to Ninmah's Portal, home of the Astral Weavers. Confronting her losses, Sam will be forced to relearn everything she thought she knew about herself, her family and this world. From rural Midwest Ohio to the upper echelons of government controlled "unacknowledged special access projects" and beyond, Red Bird explores--with sharp insight and fierce humor--the resilience of the human spirit, even during times of political chaos.