In this "vivid…lovely and inviting" (The New York Times) coming-of-age memoir?the "best piece of nature writing since H Is for Hawk" (Neil Gaiman)?a young man saves a baby magpie as his estranged father is dying, only to find that caring for the bird saves him.

This is a story of two men who could talk to birds?but were completely incapable of talking to each other.

A father who fled from his family in the dead of night, and the jackdaw he raised like a child.

A son obsessed with his absence?and the young magpie that fell into his path and refused to fly away.

This is a story about the crow family and human family; about repetition across generations and birds that run in the blood; about a terror of repeating the sins of the father and a desire to build a nest of one's own.