A review by ameliabee33
When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky by Margaret Verble

dark emotional sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25


This wasn't so much a telling of characters and their lives as it was a history of the land and the people had have and currently live there. There are many stories that readers are introduced to, and the timeline of the histories is never linear. Each chapter can contain multiple povs from Two Feathers, Crawford, Clive, Little Elk, and that creepy redheaded guy (I refuse to remember his name). These people all are connected to the land that currently, the 1920s, houses Glendale Park Zoo in Nashville, Tennessee. The land is somewhere that death tends to have always been, and Two Feathers and her companions come very close to it. 

It was a very slow, sad book. I found it a bit difficult to get into the story, until about 3/4 of the way in. Two Feathers was an easy main chatacter to like, her sense of humor came out every now and then which I really liked. She was overall, just sad as a character. Her life, her history, and her people definitely painted a picture of what it was like to be an Indigenous woman in the U.S. in the 20s. I loved the parts where she visited with the animals in the Zoo. Clive and Crawford I had a little harder time liking, but their stories were generally interesting. There was also a very brief encounter with magical realism in the form of the ghost, Little Elk. He was sort of the comic relief of the entire book. I'm glad that the animals of the zoo get justice in the end and that the crew is there to look out for them. 

There is also an explicit scene about 25% of the way into the book, so be warned. Please read the trigger warnings of this book because there are graphic scenes of sexual content, racism, alcoholism, death, etc.



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