Alumni Book Club

Golden Vale, Louisiana, is a hardscrabble coastal town 80 miles south of New Orleans but worlds away culturally. For generations, families have made their living working in commercial fishing or in the petroleum industry. After the sudden death of his father, thirty-five-year-old Jordan Pearce becomes the unwitting head of his family's storied oyster company. Amid Jordan's struggles with flighty employees, a fraught romantic life, living with his distressed, widowed mother, and a fishery that's been on life support for years, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig suddenly explodes off the coast of Louisiana, prompting one of the worst environmental disasters in history.

As fallout from the explosion and subsequent oil spill intensifies, Jordan must grapple with the existential repercussions for his family, and the surrounding community, which has already seen its fair share of hardship, having just barely recovered from Hurricane Katrina. Forced to seek help from his estranged brother, Benny―a beatnik musician who ran away to New Orleans years ago―Jordan and what's left of the quarrelsome Pearce clan are reunited under one roof, alongside a cast of unforgettable regional characters. Jordan’s desperation to save the business, coupled with Benny’s desire to distance himself from his past, test the bonds of their family and the strength of their principles. Together, they must commit to saving this long-overlooked corner of the Gulf Coast―a final act of hope in the face of impending tragedy.

After a childhood filled with heartbreak, Irene, a talented artist, finds herself in a small Central American village where she checks into a beautiful but decaying lakefront hotel called La Llorona at the base of a volcano.

The Bird Hotel tells the story of this young American who, after suffering tragedy, restores and runs La Llorona. Along the way we meet a rich assortment of characters who live in the village or come to stay at the hotel. With a mystery at its center and filled with warmth, drama, romance, humor, pop culture, and a little magic realism, The Bird Hotel has all the hallmarks of a Joyce Maynard novel that have made her a leading voice of her generation.

The Bird Hotel is a big, sweeping story spanning four decades, offering lyricism as well as whimsy. While the world New York Times bestselling author Joyce Maynard brings to life on the page is rendered from her imagination, it's one informed by the more than twenty years of which she has spent a significant amount of her time in a small Mayan indigenous village in Guatemala.