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The Birds of Opulence by Crystal Wilkinson
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The Birds of Opulence

$13.64

Narrator Allyson Johnson
Length 4 hours 50 minutes
Language English
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From the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of Blackberries, Blackberries and Water Street comes an astonishing new novel. A lyrical exploration of love and loss, The Birds of Opulence centers on several generations of women in a bucolic southern black township as they live with and sometimes surrender to madness.

The Goode-Brown family, led by matriarch and pillar of the community Minnie Mae, is plagued by old secrets and embarrassment over mental illness and illegitimacy. Meanwhile, single mother Francine Clark is haunted by her dead, lightning-struck husband and forced to fight against both the moral judgment of the community and her own rebellious daughter, Mona. The residents of Opulence struggle with vexing relationships to the land, to one another, and to their own sexuality. As the members of the youngest generation watch their mothers and grandmothers pass away, they live with the fear of going mad themselves and must fight to survive.

Crystal Wilkinson offers up Opulence and its people in lush, poetic detail. It is a world of magic, conjuring, signs, and spells, but also of harsh realities that only loveโ€”and love that's handed downโ€”can conquer. At once tragic and hopeful, this captivating novel is a story about another time, rendered for our own.

Crystal Wilkinson is the author of The Birds of Opulence, winner of the 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence; Blackberries, Blackberries, winner of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature; and Water Street, a finalist for both the UK's Orange Prize for Fiction and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. She has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, and her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including, most recently, in the Kenyon Review, Story, Agni Literary Journal, Emergence, Oxford American, and Southern Cultures. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky, where she is associate professor of English in the MFA in Creative Writing Program.

Allyson Johnson began her entertainment career in her hometown of Chicago as an Emmy Award-winning child news anchor. A graduate of Brown University, she is a working actress, singer, and audiobook narrator in the New York City metropolitan area.

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Get a free audiobook when you make the switch!

When you start a new membership in support of local bookstores with the promo code SWITCH, youโ€™ll get a bonus audiobook credit at sign-up.

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You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.

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Get a free audiobook AND support bookstores Make the switch