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Sherri Rosen’s Book Review of “Feathers of Hope” by Barbara Chepaitis

First of all let me say I love Barbara Chepaitis. I love her as a human being and I love her as a writer.
She cares about so many things and you can see it when you meet her and you can feel it in her writing.
In this particular case her delicate care goes into “Feathers of Hope” a story written about Pete Dubacher, and his sanctuary for injured birds called The Berkshire Bird Paradise, and the human connection with birds. The sanctuary is in Grafton, New York and gives care to over 1200 injured or unreleasable birds from emus, pigeons, tropical birds, eagles, owls, hawks and more.

Barbara takes us on a typical day of Pete Dubacher, from tossing dead rats to eagles to stoking woodstoves at one in the morning. Barbara also incorporates her gift of storytelling and gives us lots of amazing information such as the intelligence of birds, about birds that lie, birds being chivalrous creatures, and the vogelkopf bower bird, an unrivaled architect of love’s art. Sounds good to me.

And an example of Pete Dubacher’s love of animals is a story she tells about an eagle named Martell, who arrived in 1990. As he grew older he could no longer walk, though he could still stand. So Pete gave him an indoor residence, with Astroturf that got hosed down as needed. He lived inside for a few years, then one day when Pete was walking by he just fell over. Pete picked him up and cradled him in his arms. “I was holding him and slowly petting his head, and he just went to sleep and that was it.” “They trust me, and how do you walk away from that?”

The stories in the book teaches us how to be more human and how we learn from nature.

Barbara Chepaitis is the author of seven novels, including the critically acclaimed “Feeding Christine” and “These Dreams”, as well as the sci-fi series featuring Jaguar Addams. The fourth novel in that series, “A Lunatic Fear”, was nominated for a Romatic Times BOOKclub Reviewers’ Choice Award. She is the founder and director of the storytelling trio The Snickering Witches, and has taught classes in creativity, storytelling, and writing at the University of Albany-SUNY.

I highly recommend this book. It’s gorgeous, beautiful and has so much heart. We are so lucky to have these people in our world.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 16th, 2010 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Clients, Friends and Colleagues, Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Sherri Rosen’s Book Review of “Feathers of Hope” by Barbara Chepaitis”

  1. Barbara Chepaitis Says:

    Thank you so much Sherri! This really captures the feeling of the book, and I so appreciate you spreading the word. You know me – I only write what seems important, and Pete’s example of living is all that.

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