Set in current day Miami, this new cutting edge novel Birds of Paradise examines a family slowly and devastatingly coming unglued, for the most part due to the catastrophic disappearance of their run-away daughter who emerges off and on over a five year period only to beg for money, which her frantic mother is very willing to give her in order to have a chance to see her lost teenaged girl. Besides the mother and daughter in this dysfunctional modern day family,  the other two members, the father and the son, also have their own problems, which, of course, are made worse by the disappearance of Felice.

Though the tumultuous plot does merit attention from time to time, the characters and their motivations primarily drive this novel’s force.

Take Felice, who has lived “on the streets” of Miami, which in this case really means the beaches, along with numerous other disturbed teenagers who sometimes find refuge from the heat in an abandoned old house which is rumored to have been the death spot of an old woman a few years earlier. Questions as to how Felice manages to buy food and other necessary items for a meager existence immediately occur to the reader who has already been told of Felice’s ferocious natural beauty.

It soon becomes clear that national modeling talent scouts have discovered Felice, as well the local tattoo parlors, all who pay her handsomely for a photo shoot. Not only on  a couple of occasions, does the reader learn that total strangers regularly ask Felice, “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Elizabeth Taylor?”

Felice’s mother is a professional pastry chef; Her brother owns a local produce store. You might get hungry while you read Birds of Paradise.

Of course, the reader, after meeting her economically secure family who lives in a very comfortable house, wonders why in the world a 13 year old beautiful girl with all advantages, would choose to leave her home, her parents, and her lifestyle. Eventually Felice discloses the  fact that her premeditated removal from her home and a normal existence involves a self induced punishment propelled by something involving a best girlfriend who had a flowered past.

The reader is left with this question almost until the very end of the novel.  As a love relationship evolves, Felice, a now edgy self-reliant 17 year old, uses her skateboard to evade the suitor’s advances, knowing all along that Emerson, whose father named him after Ralph Waldo, marches to a better beat than the other homeless kids. He even seems to want a normal future, and that begins to appeal to Felice.

The distraught mother, Avis, whom Felice’s disappearance  affects the most, of course, throws  herself into magnificent pastry creations for which she is known in all of the culinary circles of Miami, having established a successful restaurant catering business early in her adulthood, even before Felice and her brother, Stanley, were born. An interesting sub plot involves a very rowdy talking bird who lives next door, whose owner is a mystical immigrant woman who works a “spell” to entice Felice to return home. This “aside” serves to show the reader the utter desperation of Avis who will try almost anything to get Felice to come home.

(Abu-Jaber immerses you in the beautiful, sensual and affluent parts of Miami, but this is contrasted with Felice’s choice to be homeless.)

Even as Felice had started to become a moody pre-teen, her mother tried to win her over with yummy concoctions hoping that she would become interested in the art of pastry making. Alas, this ploy does not work on Felice, but it does on her older brother who withdraws from teenage boy activities more and more to stay home and work with his mother in the kitchen, even more so once his sister disappears. Needless to say, the runaway Felice and her absence has colored the very existence of each member of this distraught family. Eventually, Stanley plants vegetables and herbs in the back yard and becomes interested in organic gardening, a few years later turning that interest into opening an organically focused grocery store, much to his attorney father’s dismay.

The father, Brian, after all, as a successful, but nevertheless unfulfilled attorney, wanted his son to go to college and chose a traditional career, certainly not one where he had to scrounge for customers, and therefore money. As the author lets the reader in on Brian’s world as a high powered Miami real estate lawyer, it becomes clear that every single member of this family is coming unglued at the seams.

The ending, which encompasses the last fifty pages or so, is one of the best that I have read in some time. Every action moves toward a point of completion, fulfillment, and resolution for the reader as the characters grow and become more stable human beings. Not all problems are totally resolved, but there is hope and growth exhibited in each character. For interest and suspense, I suppose, the author does not have the runaway daughter doing exactly what her parents want her to do, but there is communication and heart felt involvement. For a contemporary look  into a teenager’s world, this novel hits the nail on the head with its cutting edge language and plot.

Author Diana Abu-Jaber will be reading at Lemuria from Birds of Paradise this afternoon at 5:00. This is a reading to be attended!  -Nan