Lost Birds

This is not your typical novel about DP life in the new world. Brimming with compassion, humor, existential angst, empathy, and awareness of the painful and tragic in life, it does not yield to sentimentality or the tired clichés of patriotic writing, but retains a healthy balance, illustrating the author's double allegiance to Lithuania and to the United States. Lost Birds, an apt title for the displaced persons arriving on American shores after a dangerous escape from the homeland and the Soviet invasion, the novel in linked short stories technically covers the period from mainly after the DP refugee camps in Germany up to the liberation of Lithuania in the 1990s. The short stories or chapters have recurring characters with their own viewpoints and chronology, allowing readers to enter the minds of several of them and follow the fast-paced plot. Birute Putrius never neglects the feelings of her chosen focus characters, yet at the same time she anticipates the reactions of her readers and fills in any blanks as to history, politics, immigrant life that the reader may not be privy to. Thus the book is a fascinating read, demonstrating the adaptation to American life her protagonists have to undergo, their difficulties in an unaccustomed environment. The period that the book covers encompasses the upward mobility of the DPs, their unexpected involvement in Chicago's sociological and political changes, moving through racial tensions, the 1960s, the Vietnam war and its effects, dealing not only with Lithuanian settlement in the city, but demonstrating how the immigrants were part of a much bigger picture of what was happening in America in those decades. Birute Putrius is our great and sincere guide throughout this maze. What is especially breathtaking is her ability to brilliantly accomplish so many things at once, keep our interest and subtly employ various literary techniques, such as magical realism, a finely honed sense of humor, skilled plotting. Through the author's magic we come to care about the people who have come alive before our eyes. We have laughed and cried with them, and regret leaving them when we put the book down.

Lost Birds – the horrors of war, the horrors of being caught between two evils, the Soviets and the Nazis, the horrors of not knowing what will happen to you, your family, your country is only the beginning. Now you find out you can get to America, a country you heard of, but know nothing about, don’t know the language, don’t know how you will survive is the second part. Then comes the realization that you are in a big city, need to have a place to live and work.One redeeming factor in all of this is that there are others who came from the same place, so you don’t feel so alone, but you are still alone and longing for the homeland you were forced out of.The families in this tale live a life, interwoven by the old country, by the new reality, and by the children who really didn’t know the old country and try, against the wishes of their parents, to be Americans.As in her other novel, “The Last Book Smuggler”, Birute Putrius brings in the old folk tales, the spirits of the dead, the domovoi, the food and drinks of the old country.How it all plays out is told through the lives of individuals over the period from 1944 to the freedom of Lithuania in 1991. An interesting read, at times happy, at times sad, at times one wants to scream out “why”.If you lived in Chicago at this time, I believe you would see your own family in there somewhere.I would recommend this book to all, especially those who lived this tale, also to those who thought they might have known what it was like.

These marvelous stories , rich with pathos, wit and irony tale us into a world where we meet immigrant families; parents who have fled to Chicago bearing the scars of war and banishment from their homeland in Lithuania and their children, some of whom have undergone the same traumas and others who have their own crises of identity. They bear the imprint of their parents' lives at the same time face the imperative to become American. The author effortlessly , vividly draws us into their often which conflicted worlds, from childhood, coming of age into adulthood. The tales are, by turn, gut wrenchingly sad,hilarious, magical, spun with great authority. I loved themMLC.

I was intrigued by the stories, mainly because some mirrored my own experiences as a DP (Displaced Person) refugee child. I could identify and reminisce with the characters depicted in the pages.

LOST BIRDS is a breathtaking story collection that invites the reader to take flight and journey back in time to the wave of post-war Lithuanian immigrants who settled in Chicago lost and alone with nothing more than haunting memories and the determination to survive and start anew. The flight is a turbulent one full of dips, daring, exquisite humor and magical moments of hope. Through each character's story, Birute Putrius takes us back to not only her Southside Chicago, but back to our own childhoods and past in which we have all been "lost birds" of one kind or another. LOST BIRDS is a perfect dance in flight of poetic language and raw reality.

Lost Birds is a story of an immigrant experience that is unique and captivating. The storyline keeps the reader bound to its colourful characters with their varied life experiences. The text is beautifully written, the words carefully chosen to evoke a myriad of emotions ... from sadness and despair ... to passion and optimism. This novel is highly recommended for those who wish to experience a rarely penned part of history, to be moved by the will and stamina of a displaced people, to feel the emotions of longing, of love, of passion and finally, of resolution. Above all, Lost Birds is a very entertaining read.

As the daughter of Lithuanian Displaced Persons myself, I looked to this collection of interconnected short stories about Lithuanian DPs in Chicago after WWII as a sort of family history. Ms. Putties blends history, romance, sadness, anger, and mysticism with great effect, exploring the ways in which loss of homeland changes people.