Matthew Reilly is a lonely priest haunted by secrets. Young Alison is the shy and devoted keeper of Daisy, a falcon that suffered an accident and can no longer fly. When they meet in a Boston parish, Matt tells Alison about the day a decade ago when he missed the plane out of Logan Airport that tore into one of the Twin Towers. What he hasn’t told her is that among the victims was a son that no one knew he’d fathered.

With no confidantes and close to exhaustion, Matt suffers a heart attack, forcing him to reflect on what's become of his life. He recalls a teaching stint in Toronto a year earlier, his encounter with Gavin, a troubled and predatory man, and his discovery that his son had a male partner who had perished with him. He remembers returning to Boston, only to be perplexed by Alison and the affection that she and her beloved falcon draw from the homeless people who live on the Boston Common, but Matt has forgotten a momentary but fateful encounter with Alison eight years earlier in Toronto and it’s only when her falcon frightens a child in the parish that even Alison begins to recall her terrifying ordeal years ago as a homeless person in Toronto.

Born and raised in the New York City area, Carole Giangrande now resides in Toronto. Her novella, A Gardener on the Moon, was co-winner of the 2010 Ken Klonsky Novella Contest. She is the author of two novels, An Ordinary Star (2004) and A Forest Burning (2000) and a short story collection, Missing Persons (1994), as well as two non-fiction books: Down To Earth: The Crisis in Canadian Farming (1985) and The Nuclear North: The People, The Regions and the Arms Race (1983). Her most recent novella, Midsummer, was published to literary acclaim in 2014. She’s worked as a broadcast journalist for cbc Radio, and her fiction, articles and reviews have appeared in literary journals and in Canada’s major newspapers. While revising new work, she now comments as The Thoughtful Blogger (a space for interesting books and intermittent reflection), available through her website at http://www.carolegiangrande.com

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"Not magical realism, but piercingly real magic; wounds and revelations are Carole Giangrande's canvas. An award-winning novelist, Giangrande moves her vivid characters deftly through darkness and light, chiaroscuro. I found it hard to close the last page on people and birds who entered my life through this tender, poignant novel."

"With breathtaking language and gentle insights, this quietly beautiful book gives us good people struggling with the mute loneliness imposed by secrets. Through her characters' love for that most ancient of birds--the falcon--Giangrande takes us into the mysteries of faith, forgiveness and the search for peace. Thoughtful and thought-provoking, a joy to read, the novel lingers long after its close."

"The spirit of brokenness and its redemption lie at the heart of Carole Giangrande's brilliant, at times shattering, novel. Here, human brutality gives way to an abiding hope in the unseen order that binds all of creation, in a physical world at once sacred and profane. A glorious expression of Giangrande's deeply spiritual vision, The Tender Birds is a rare and riveting fusion of 'the poetry of things imagined,' gorgeously distilled prose, urgency, and exquisite plotting--a literary page-turner of the highest order. I'm in awe of Giangrande's work and the reassuring wisdom that suffuses it, wisdom our world badly needs right now."