‘Bird Sisters’ enchants with tale of two spinsters

Think of all the great books that you’ve ever read in your life. Which ones immediately leap to mind?

If you’re lucky, there comes along once in a great while a book that just grabs hold of your heart and will happily remain in your memory for the rest of your days. "The Bird Sisters" is such a book.

Milly and Twiss are known throughout Spring Green, Wis., as “the bird sisters” — two spinsters who minister to broken birds and make them whole again. But there was a time when these two had their whole lives ahead of them, lives they were anxious to take on with great anticipation and excitement, until the events of the summer of 1947.

It begins when their priest, Father Rice, pronounces that God doesn’t exist and leaves an astounded congregation for the wilds of Mexico. Then, the girls’ father, a golf pro who seems to love his flamboyant lifestyle more than he loves their mother, is in a car accident while coming home from buying ice-cream sundaes. His game, (both literally and metaphorically) is forever altered and he retreats behind closed barn doors. It’s also the summer that Milly falls in love with a boy named Asa.

It’s when their older cousin Bett arrives for an extended stay that the winds of change truly begin to blow, and nothing the girls could do could stop the chain of events that will impact their lives forever. And as they look back as they come to the end of their lives, both Milly and Twiss find themselves reflecting on their pasts and wondering if their lives could have been different.

I was completely enchanted from the first page with the story of Milly and Twiss, the two eccentric but lively elderly sisters who have lived their lives in each other's pockets. Debut author Rebecca Rasmussen takes her readers on a journey that includes happiness, tragedy, great love and great loss. There is a little something for every reader in this fascinating story — a little mystery, a little romance and a whole lot of heart.

I look for "The Bird Sisters" to be on every favorite book list of 2011. I know it will be on mine.