FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 1999

When Kate Banner, an American midwife in Nicaragua, loses another patient - a young Nicaraguan woman who had given birth only the night before - she knows it is time to go home. Travelling home leads her to Guatemala, where she becomes involved with the innocent victims of war. Through her experiences and encounters, Kate finds a place she can connect with and call home far away from her American birthplace.

Patricia Henley’s Hummingbird House is a devastatingly powerful and emotional story of a human heart unbinding itself in the most unjust of worlds.

About Patricia Henley

Patricia Henley has published two collections of stories, Friday Night at the Silver Star and The Secret of Cartwheels. Carnegie-Mellon University Press published a book of her poems, Back Roads, in 1996. Her stories have been anthologized in Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize Anthology. This is her first novel. She teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at Purdue University.