Starling Days

"Mina is staring over the edge of the George Washington Bridge when a patrol car drives up. She tries to convince the officers she's not about to jump, but they don't believe her. Her husband, Oscar, is called to pick her up. Oscar hopes that leaving New York City for a few months will give Mina the space to heal, so they move to London. Mina, a classicist, works on her book about mythological women and searches for solutions to her failing mental health by pondering their lives. Penelope, Psyche, Leda . . . They all survived, didn't they? Mina finally finds a beam of light in Phoebe, a real-life woman, and Oscar and Mina's complicated love is tested. A gorgeously wrought novel, variously about love, mythology, mental illness, and the times we need to seek out milder psychological climates, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's Starling Days is a complex and compelling work of fiction by a singularly gifted writer." -- Back cover.