Twelve-year-old Jewel is a mixed-race (Black Jamaican/Mexican American/white) girl living in Iowa with her parents and Grandpa. Jewel’s older brother John, known as Bird, died on the day she was born. He tried to fly off the nearby cliff and her Grandpa, who gave the little boy his nickname, hasn’t spoken since. Jewel, smart, sad, and lonely, finds great comfort near the cliff, although her parents don’t know she goes there. Her loneliness eases when she meets John, who wants to be an astronaut and knows about the stars. A Black child adopted into a white family, he’s staying with his nearby uncle. Jewel’s Grandpa doesn’t need to speak to make it clear he thinks John is a duppy, a dangerous spirit like the one Jewel’s dad believes lured Bird off the cliff. Her mother, on the other hand, brightens around John — Jewel rarely has seen her so happy. Then they find out John is really named Eugene. Jewel wants to believe it’s just a coincidence he was using her brother’s name. But it was an ill-conceived joke, one that he has grown to regret, and one that lays bare the pain and anger in Jewel’s family surrounding her brother’s death. Themes of grief, loss, family, friendship, religion, and spirituality, all are deftly woven into a poetic, insightful, deeply moving novel. (Ages 10–13)

Entrenched secrets, mysterious spirits, and an astonishing friendship weave together in this extraordinary and haunting debut that School Library Journal calls “a powerful story about loss and moving on.”

Nothing matters. Only Bird matters. And he flew away.

Jewel never knew her brother Bird, but all her life she has lived in his shadow. Her parents blame Grandpa for the tragedy of their family’s past: they say that Grandpa attracted a malevolent spirit—a duppy—into their home. Grandpa hasn’t spoken a word since. Now Jewel is twelve, and she lives in a house full of secrets and impenetrable silence.

Jewel is sure that no one will ever love her like they loved Bird, until the night that she meets a mysterious boy in a tree. Grandpa is convinced that the boy is a duppy, but Jewel knows that he is something more. And that maybe—just maybe—the time has come to break through the stagnant silence of the past.