I am a little late in writing this month’s blog and have given it my best shot in a couple of drafts. I hope it’s not too boring or difficult to follow. At the least, I hope it makes you want to read this book written in a creative and clever way.

I read the blurb on the back before I started reading the book itself. Still, I somehow missed the point about the story being told through three points of view in three different years. I had read half the book before I realized it was not going to give me Mindy’s point of view like it gave me her father’s, mother’s, and sister’s.

The book was not really about Mindy. Rather, it was about the three people who loved her the most and the family she made more whole than it already was before she was adopted into it. At first, I was disappointed that I was not going to hear Mindy’s voice in the story. How she felt about being adopted, about growing up in a white family, in a predominantly white town while looking very much Vietnamese, and about carrying around pieces of her life’s puzzle but never being close to putting it all together until she decides to explore where she came from.

I also wondered why Mindy’s story was overshadowed by the feelings of people whose thoughts I was reading. You see, each chapter is narrated by Bruce, her adopted father, Linda, her adopted mother, or Sonny, her adopted sister. Bruce’s narrative is in the present while Linda’s is almost forty years before Bruce’s, followed by Sonny’s told somewhere in the middle.

For instance, Bruce talks about his mother having another stroke and being forced to move into a rehabilitation facility. He talks about how difficult she became to love, and to please, after Bruce’s older brother Dale died in the Vietnam war fifty years ago. But it is Linda who talks about how difficult it was to introduce Mindy to Bruce’s family, especially his mother given who the woman blamed for Dale’s death. The Vietnam war situation is introduced early in the book so, rest assured, I am not spoiling anything from deep within the plot.

I offer this specific example to showcase the creativity of Finkbeiner’s writing. Together, Bruce and Linda give us a peek into the dynamics of a broader family held together by a matriarch who is not easy to deal with but is loved and respected, nonetheless. Each character loves this woman in their own way. Bruce tells us about making coffee for her, knowing she will send him back to make it the right way if needed. But he narrates it with pride instead of spite or exasperation, despite what we read about Bruce and his mother in other chapters.

Linda tells us about the role of peacekeeper she has played over the decades, doing her best to not upset Bruce’s mother since Bruce manages to do a good job of it himself. At the same time, she doesn’t sound resentful and knows she has Bruce’s support along the way. I guess that’s the only risk with using multiple viewpoints to tell the story. The detailed emotional journey of each protagonist may not receive its due word count. But I can’t say I felt that when reading The Nature of Small Birds. Perhaps that’s the beauty of writing in first person and focusing on an issue that is vital to the story. Each narrative tells you what you need to know by talking about it.

As much as I enjoyed weaving together pieces of the broader family life through Bruce and Linda, I thoroughly enjoyed Sonny’s narrative about being Mindy’s sister. This is where the writing becomes clever, and the more I read the more I realized that each of Bruce’s and Linda’s narratives were the perfect setup for the upcoming Sonny narrative.

Again, Bruce’s and Linda’s narratives take place almost forty years apart and Sonny’s narrative is somewhere in the middle. While dealing with normal teenage issues like getting ready for college, sharing a room with her dorky younger sister, and being dumped at the prom by the most popular guy in the county (yes, county!), Sonny does a great job of helping us understand Mindy’s turmoil at feeling different just because she looks different.

When she encounters Mindy being cornered by a strange woman in the bookstore, pressing Mindy to provide names of Chinese authors and acting surprised that a Chinese person (reminder, Mindy is Vietnamese) would not read Chinese books, Sonny steps in to rescue Mindy without creating a scene. But not before she thinks to herself that Mindy will have to learn to defend herself because Sonny won’t always be there to protect her. This quick encounter gives us a glimpse into Mindy’s personality but, again, from Sonny’s point of view. This was one of those scenes where I would have loved to hear how Mindy felt about the encounter and why she did not feel the need to stand up for herself in general.

There were other scenes in Sonny’s narrative in which she discusses interactions between Mindy and others, including their grandmother. I won’t talk about them in detail here. You will just have to read the book to find out! But, especially in those encounters, I would have loved to understand how Mindy felt about those interactions and why.

But I guess that’s what sequels are for! The ending of The Nature of Small Birds leaves perfect space for Mindy’s story to be told in the first person, especially now that we know more about her adoption, the family and community in which she grew up, and the fact that she wants to explore her origins and find her biological family in Vietnam.

I hope the story will continue into a second book. I would love to learn more about Mindy and what she learns about herself.