Book: Birds of a Lesser Paradise by Megan Mayhew Bergman

A collection of short stories, most about people and animals.

"The month after I found out my husband, Nate, slept with a woman who rode dressage, I rented a run-down cottage on Abbet's Cove with sloping pine floors and a large front porch that caught the sound-side breeze....Dear Mary, I prayed, let me be celibate and rational. Let me, for once, forget about men and be happy."

Yeah, it's that kind of book but much more. There is a story about a community garden in the inner city, a story about a woman who has to choose her lover or her rescued animals, a story about a veterinarian who had been attacked by a wolf hybrid, a story about a daughter taking care of a mother who is dying of breast cancer, stories about the elderly, a story of a woman and a lemur center and alcohol and staying sober...

"She was tireless. She could stabilize an emaciated horse in the morning, trim a goat's overgrown hooves before lunch, attend a court hearing in the afternoon, and still be home to feel all of the animals she kept herself."

"I was a thirty-six-year-old single woman living in a poor man's theme park, running birding trips into the swamp. Most of my binocular-laden clients were pushing sixty....I drove them into the swamp in Dad's pickup, left them with a map, a bagged lunch, water, a GPS device, and a phone, and picked them up at twilight in a place that seemed less wild every day. For the most part, I was happy."

I don't even like books of short stories but the title of this one had an owl on the cover.....so I picked it up, read the first few and liked them enough to read all of them. She lives in Vermont and her husband is a veterinarian.