Boy, Snow, Bird

Boy, Snow, Bird is a novel about race in mid-20th-century America. The novel’s central protagonist is Boy Novak, though the book employs two participant narrators: Boy, in Part I; Boy’s daughter, Bird, in Part II; then Boy once more, in Part III. The novel takes place almost entirely in Flax Hill, Massachusetts, except for the first chapter; however, it jumps in time, with the first portion set in the 1950s, while the latter portion is set in the late 1960s.

Boy Novak is an average girl living with her abusive father, Frank Novak, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Her father, a rat catcher, is violent and unpredictable, and Boy realizes that if she remains, she will either kill her father or herself. When the opportunity presents itself, she sneaks out of the house and catches a bus as far as she can, which turns out to be Flax Hill, a town populated in large part by creatives and craftsmen. When she arrives, she takes up residence at a boarding house for single women. She goes on dates and takes up odd jobs, seemingly more interested in figuring out a way to feel at home in Flax Hill than anything else.