Following the loss of her mother, the author begins to rediscover joy and play through her encounters with the birds and natural world around her in California and New York. A heartfelt collection of poetry that is part memoir, part nature-writing, and part philosophical musing, The Lovesongs of Birds is a beautiful and childlike examination of grief and the way it changes us. While the story is at times despairing or melancholic, it is at other times funny and biting, even silly and playful. There is a strong current throughout of a firm and willful grasping at hope and optimism, an insistence that life is meaningful even in the face of death.