Friday Memes: The Someday Birds by Sally J. Pla

Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader and Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice.

The Someday Birds by Sally J. Pla. 327 p. Harper/ HarperCollins Publishers, January, 2017. 9890062445766.

Publisher synopsis: Charlie’s perfectly ordinary life has been unraveling ever since his war journalist father was injured in Afghanistan.

When his father heads from California to Virginia for medical treatment, Charlie reluctantly travels cross-country with his boy-crazy sister, unruly brothers, and a mysterious new family friend. He decides that if he can spot all the birds that he and his father were hoping to see someday along the way, then everything might just turn out okay.

Debut author Sally J. Pla has written a tale that is equal parts madcap road trip, coming-of-age story for an autistic boy who feels he doesn’t understand the world, and an uplifting portrait of a family overcoming a crisis.

First line: My hands aren't really clean until I've washed them twelve times, one for each year of my life. 

Page 56: I walk over to the policeman, calm and quiet, like I am in a movie about myself. I stare into the officer's mirror sunglasses, and tell him the only number I know by heart. Gram made me memorize it only a few weeks ago, when she found out I didn't know any of my contact information. "Jesus H. Christ, Charlie," she'd said. "What if there's an emergency?"

I have been pining for this ever since learning of it last year. Now that I have a finished copy in my hot little hands, I wish I could sequester myself somewhere and read but I've a few commitments to deal with before getting to it. As a bird lover and super-amateur birder, I immediately adored the connection Charlie and his father had with birding. The chapter names all have something to do with birding. Chapter one is called Flockers and Loners and so on. Love!