The Paperback Release of Willa’s Grove is TODAY!

A year ago today in NYC on pub day!

An Ode to Migration:

Every year in early March, just when I start seriously considering moving to Mexico or Arizona or the Bahamas or Belize or…just anywhere that’s not Montana every-day-grey and encrusted…a sound emerges. And promises that the snow will melt and the birds will be back and the forest floor will bloom. It is the sound of the red-winged blackbird.

Every year I hear it and worry for it. “Oh no! It’s too soon! There is still so much impossible weather to come. The marsh is still frozen. There’s nothing there for you to make your nest. You will shiver and freeze in the trees. Come back in a month. Please!”

But every year, the red-winged blackbird holds court somewhere that I cannot see, scouting out my marsh for another season of nestlings and fledglings. Every year it chooses this place behind my house, as safe ground for its to-and-fro migration. This is the “to” part and for almost thirty years, it drops me to my knees. It has chosen this place and exactly this time of year. So who am I not to?

When the birds left last fall, after the way 2020 had behaved, I really wasn’t sure if they’d come back at all.

Could they sense that humanity was limping in a global pandemic? Did they want to get anywhere near our fear and our anger and our helplessness? And what about our warming planet? In 2020 style, would the climate crisis catapult and would they come back too early and find no food and die? I tried not to read articles like this one. But how could I not. The returning birds are how I know how to hope. And if I feel that way, then I’m sure much of the limping world feels that way. “Hope is the thing with feathers,” after all.

We need our birds. I’m sure it’s much more than humans which needs them. The whole eco-system needs them. But I’m not going to pretend to be a scientist. I just know that when birds fly through my world, I can believe in its goodness and its future. I wrote much of my novel, Willa’s Grove, on my screened porch by the marsh, listening to red-winged blackbirds, and so many others: ruby-crowned kinglets, nuthatches, western tanager, robin, chickadees, varied thrush, Swainson’s thrush, sora. But the red-winged blackbird is the “king of the rushes” until it’s time to migrate. It’s no surprise then that Willa’s Grove is full of migration. One editor thought there were “too many birds in the book.” So I wrote in more.

Birds, especially migrating birds, are what we need to not just hope, but to understand movement and unity. When they pass over us, they are stitching us to another place on the globe.

If we look up, we can catch the thread, as the poet Naomi Shihab Nye writes in her poem Kindness. And if we catch the thread, they thread us together. I truly believe that. Not the same with airplanes.

One year ago from today, I was revving up to be on a lot of airplanes, across the US, for two months. It was my publication day for Willa’s Grove. To celebrate, I sat in a New York City bistro eating bacalao, white bean cassoulet, and sipping on a glass of French rose. People were talking about this thing called Covid, but way over in China. And Italy. Not really in the US. I mean…a global pandemic? In the US? People had things to do and places to go and people to see and New York City was as forward moving as usual. I asked the waiter to take a photo of me. I look very happy in that photo. I finished lunch and went to the iconic Strand Bookstore, and lo…there was my novel. And my memoir too. I signed them and asked the bookstore clerk to take a photo of me. I look so happy in that one too. That night I did my first event. It was full of fans and friends and Haven Writing Retreat alums. I got to read from my book and see its messages coming alive. I got to sign books with personalized, loving words. I was in my element. I’d wanted to publish a novel for decades. It took me eight years and nineteen drafts to get Willa’s Grove where it needed to be. The picture from that night’s event is the happiest of all.

At that night’s event, I read a section about Willa finding a migrating dead snow goose on the banks of Freezeout Lake, with its heart cut out of it and placed on its white breast. About how Willa, a newly grieving widow, lies down next to it, and weeps, and falls asleep out of the emotional exhaustion that grief requires of its griever. And she falls asleep also out of surrender. That gutted heart is hers too. I hadn’t planned on reading that section, but for some reason, in that New York City packed venue, I felt the need to speak migration. And how we can sometimes lose our way, and even our lives. Never could I have imagined what was about to happen.

As Covid swept the US and the world and my book tour went virtual, I kept reading that excerpt. I wrote book club questions and included this one: Why do you think that there are so many birds in the book? People responded so differently than they did the night of the NYC event. It was like 2020 was the year they learned to look up. And maybe even catch the thread.

A year later, as my paperback version of Willa’s Grove makes its migration across the globe, I want to imagine it casting its own thread of hope.

Its messages are exactly what we need right now. That we need to come together. We need to tell our stories. We need to create the space to listen to each others’ stories. We need to talk and hear about dashed dreams and new ones. We need to be gentle with one another and to learn the lessons of the woods. And yes, birds.

Each morning I go out on my front porch, no matter the weather, and I stand there and say, “Thank you for this day. May I be _______ in it.” Sometimes the word “joyful” comes out. Sometimes “graceful.” Or “peaceful.” Or “grateful.” I’m never sure what word will emerge. But the word that comes out is the word I fasten to my day. The thread I catch. Words are that way too. They migrate.

This morning, as my book migrates in its new paperback form, when I went out to the front porch and said my morning words, something of a miracle happened. As I spoke “Thank you for this day. May I be…” the word that came out of my mouth was “hopeful.” And just as I said that word…guess what I heard? The first springtime call of the red-winged blackbird.

“Hope is the thing with feathers,” indeed.

I hope that you will catch the thread of the birds, the words, and the women of Willa’s Grove.

Yours,
Laura

“Dear Laura, I have been reading Willa’s Grove and it has been a hug in the form of a book. It has made me realize the large void in my life this last year.  So thrilled that things are slowly moving ahead.  Just wanted to say hello and thank you for your book. I am enjoying it so much.”

—Heidi Okada (a loving reader who reached out to me in this loving way. She has certainly caught the thread.)

I am thrilled to announce…

Haven Writing Retreats will resume this fall!

Click here for more info. After all we’ve been through…you KNOW you need this!
Email me to arrange a call and learn more: laura@lauramunson.com

• September 8 – 12, 2021
• September 15 – 19, 2021
• October 27 – 31, 2021