Overview
In 1774, an unusual bird was spotted on Captain Cook’s second expedition to the South Seas. This single specimen was captured, preserved, and brought back to England—and no other bird of its kind was ever seen again. The bird was given to naturalist Joseph Banks, who displayed it proudly in his collection until it too disappeared. Were it not for a colored drawing created by the ship’s artist, it would seem that the Mysterious Bird of Ulieta had never existed.
Two hundred years later, naturalist John Fitzgerald gets a call from an old friend asking him to join the search for the bird’s remains. He traces the bird’s history, uncovering surprising details about the role of a woman known only as Miss B in Joseph Banks’s life and career. Could she be the key to solving the mystery—to finally finding the lost Bird of Ulieta?
Seamlessly leaping between two time periods, The Conjurer’s Bird is at once the story of Joseph Banks’s secret life and of Fitz’s thrilling and near-impossible race to find the elusive bird.
A Book Sense Notable Book
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Synopsis
In 1774, an unusual bird was spotted on Captain Cook’s second expedition to the South Seas. This single specimen was captured, preserved, and brought back to England—and no other bird of its kind was ever seen again. The bird was given to naturalist Joseph Banks, who displayed it proudly in his collection until it too disappeared. Were it not for a colored drawing created by the ship’s artist, it would seem that the Mysterious Bird of Ulieta had never existed.
Two hundred years later, naturalist John Fitzgerald gets a call from an old friend asking him to join the search for the bird’s remains. He traces the bird’s history, uncovering surprising details about the role of a woman known only as Miss B in Joseph Banks’s life and career. Could she be the key to solving the mystery—to finally finding the lost Bird of Ulieta?
Seamlessly leaping between two time periods, The Conjurer’s Bird is at once the story of Joseph Banks’s secret life and of Fitz’s thrilling and near-impossible race to find the elusive bird.
A Book Sense Notable Book
To download free discussion guides, visit NovelThoughts.net. To subscribe to our book group e-newsletter, email [email protected].
Publishers Weekly
BBC TV producer Davies, the author of mysteries starring Sherlock Holmes's housekeeper, turns his attention to the search for "the rarest bird ever recorded" in this gripping book of literary suspense. In 1774, on Captain Cook's second expedition to the South Pacific, a single specimen of a thrushlike bird was captured. The bird entered the collection of eminent naturalist Sir Joseph Banks-but then it disappeared. Moving adroitly between the 18th and the 21st centuries, Davies indulges in clever speculation about the bird's whereabouts and adds an appealing strain of romance surrounding the identity of Banks's mistress, "Miss B." Alternating chapters chronicle the adventures of Fitz, a present-day London conservationist who's agreed to try to find "the Mysterious Bird of Ulieta" at the urging of a woman he once loved-but it's his spunky female graduate student whose ingenuity and indefatigable research do much to keep the plot spinning past red herrings, dead ends and the machinations of unscrupulous people racing to find the bird first. A third subplot concerns Fitz's grandfather's search for the Congo peacock, and it is to Davies' credit that he renders the novel's botanical and zoological details with an immediacy that helps along the narrative. A few farfetched plot twists aside, this is a captivating novel. (Nov. 22) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewLinking past and present as it reveals the fate of an ornithological marvel, BBC Television producer Martin Davies's The Conjurer's Bird is a rarity in its own right -- compelling literary suspense that will appeal to mystery fans, history buffs, and nature lovers.
The Mysterious Bird of Ulieta, seen only once, during Captain Cook's 1774 expedition to a remote Pacific island, is an enigma: "one of Nature's conjuring tricks -- a creature that had disappeared as if with a wave of the hand." Now, more than two centuries later, London conservationist John "Fitz" Fitzgerald -- an authority on extinct birds -- is approached by his former lover and offered a lucrative reward if he can somehow track down the one and only specimen brought back from Cook's expedition. Chances are the preserved remains of the thrush-like bird haven't survived the intervening years; but the highly inquisitive Fitz, with the help of an intrepid graduate student named Katya, sets out to unravel the mystery that begins with the bird's last known owner, the eminent 18th-century naturalist Sir Joseph Banks. As Fitz and Katya delve into Banks's shadowy past in search of clues that will point them toward the Bird of Ulieta, they're continually drawn to his passionate -- and ill-fated -- relationship with his mistress, a mysterious woman named Miss B.
Spellbinding, intense, and oh so bittersweet, The Conjurer's Bird is much more the sum of its parts -- historical mystery, naturalist thriller, heartrending love story: It's a beautifully written and truly unforgettable story. Paul Goat Allen