Summary from GoodReads:

When a bird flies into a window in Spring Green, Wisconsin, sisters Milly and Twiss get a visit. Twiss listens to the birds’ heartbeats, assessing what she can fix and what she can’t, while Milly listens to the heartaches of the people who’ve brought them. The two sisters have spent their lives nursing people and birds back to health.

But back in the summer of 1947, Milly was known as a great beauty with emerald eyes and Twiss was a brazen wild child who never wore a dress or did what she was told. That was the summer their golf pro father got into an accident that cost him both his swing and his charm, and their mother, the daughter of a wealthy jeweler, finally admitted their hardscrabble lives wouldn’t change. It was the summer their priest, Father Rice, announced that God didn’t exist and ran off to Mexico, and a boy named Asa finally caught Milly’s eye. And most unforgettably, it was the summer their cousin Bett came down from a town called Deadwater and changed the course of their lives forever.

My Review:

First of all, I want to thank Beth Hoffman for bringing Rebecca Rasmussen to my attention.  Not only is she a completely sweet lady, but she writes a fantastic story.

Milly and Twiss are a bit eccentric, but also real, breathing characters that give this story so much charm and make it a joy to read.  In spite of the books careful pathing through the story, I found myself unable to put it down until I reached the conclusion – and even then I turned the page whispering “Please, just a few more pages…”

The Bird Sisters is a solid example of why books do not need to be filled with over-eager drama or romance to keep the readers attention.  Careful building of characters and plot works wonders and Rebecca has done that well here.

I do have one little complaint, however.  It took a bit for me to get used to the back and forth between the present and the past.  There was no real line drawn and I’d find myself thinking that it was the present when it had shifted to the past and vice versa.  But, that was a small issue in the light of the story and I figured it out enough to be able to follow the story well.