The Night Birds Still Sing

Moving to the grand house among her mother’s tenants was, at first, a welcome escape from her parents' constant battles. But even in this new setting, Phoebe still sleepwalks, and her sister is plagued by nightmares.

It all began the evening after the attack on Pearl Harbor. That day, Phoebe’s best friend and her family were taken by the police to an internment camp, and her parents had their most explosive fight yet. Shortly after, her mother left the marriage and, to support herself and her daughters through the war, opened a Hollywood rooming house. The old Victorian was a steal, one of many confiscated Japanese homes sold by the government at below-market prices.

Now, at night, the windows are blacked out and streetlights dimmed, hiding coastal homes from the threat of Japanese bombs. But this is still Hollywood. The roomers who come and go from Phoebe’s life are a colorful mix—starlets, jazz musicians, con-artists, long-suffering writers, and Holocaust survivors.

Phoebe longs for her absent father and unconsciously searches for him in the men who pass through the house: the jazz player, the grifter, the drifter. At the same time, she craves her mother’s affection. But Elaine, hardened by life’s burdens, has grown distant. Each night, she curses the birds that sing outside her window, interrupting her sleep. “Shut up, you katchkas!” she yells, but the night birds keep singing.

The Night Birds Still Sing is a story of humor, melancholy, and yearning—driven by the raw emotions of a young girl navigating love, anger, and hope in wartime Hollywood.