Chicken Coop in a High Wind - by Leonardo Costa Veras (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Delve into a work shimmering with literary wit, poignant comedy, and emotional depth.

Spanning nearly one hundred years and three continents, Chicken Coop in a High Wind recounts the saga of the Breton family, setting off with the patriarch-Ernesto José Breton-forced to leave his hometown in northern Brazil due to a hapless poem published in the school newspaper. Fate propels Ernesto into an accidental life, from his marriage to the levelheaded Maria Lúcia Duarte, to the birth of his three children, the loss of one, the disappearance of another, and lastly the weight of expectation upon the shoulders of the youngest-Nicholas Elias-who hijacks the narrative to present time.

This is a story about people telling stories, but remembering things differently. From the front lines of a coup d'état in 1964, to the dangers of gold-prospecting in the Amazon, academic bohemianism in Paris, drunk voodooism in the Caribbean, and finally the pandemical near-present in Los Angeles-where cult gurus, backgammon enthusiasts, the famous, the unfamous, and the infamous are incited to do strange things every time the Santa Ana winds blow from the high desert.

Chicken Coop in a High Wind intertwines laughter with sorrow, the nostalgic with the shrewd, grand gestures with the unavoidable comedy of human fallibility. It is a beckoning invitation to mature readers yearning for the emotional intricacies of John Irving's novels, the poetic fatalism of Gabriel García Márquez, and those who dare to ask: How does storytelling shape us? And how do we garble our own personal stories? Here is a world where history is but a flighty tale, told erratically, and retold, and taken as gospel.