Birdless (Paperback or Softback)

In a Dying World. Love Takes Wing

It's 2099, humanity is nearly gone, and the birds are already extinct. Portia walks the emptying streets of her dying town, hoping for a last glimpse of a bird. When she and her brilliant brother Ivan break into a neighbor's house looking for tools, they find Amelia- traumatized, starving, and hiding.

As Amelia learns to trust her, friendship turns to passion, and Portia's narrow world opens into something wider and more joyful than she believed was still possible. In a world that has outlawed religion, Amelia introduces Portia to the faith of her grandmothers, a faith of the tactile and the real. Together, the two women go looking for other survivors: seven irreverent elders who call themselves the Nigh End Breakfast and Supper Club, and two abandoned children who make them, improbably, a family.

Then a rift in time and space takes everyone Portia loves, stranding Amelia centuries in the past with Ivan and the children. Amelia begins to discover creative powers she never knew she had, and searches the dimensions for a living world where humans can love one another. Portia, held up by the stubborn humor of the old people, looks for hope wherever it can still be found.

Birdless is a love story that refuses to end where it's supposed to.

Jenny Yates (she/her/hers) was born in North Carolina, but she didn't stay there long. She's lived in many places - Thailand, Vietnam, Germany, Ecuador, Venezuela, San Francisco, and the DC area. Now she and her wife hang out in Tallahassee, Florida. From the time she was small, she's always written stories and poems. Two of her books have found their way into print: Your Horoscope: A Guide to Interpretation and Quito Murder Mystery. For 35 years, her day job was being a freelance astrologer. This meant traveling up and down the East Coast of the US, doing workshops at women's music festivals and meeting lots of lesbians. When she wasn't on the road, she wrote about aspects and transits, guiding people through the crossroads in their lives.She's a Scorpio with Libra rising, a bookworm, a movie buff, a romantic, a pagan, and a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation.