We Should All Be Birds

A Memoir

De: Brian Buckbee, Carol Ann Fitzgerald

Narrado por: Brian Buckbee

“A sparkling example of the best kind of first-person storytelling in that its specificity succeeds in revealing universal truths…An extraordinary story full of humanity and life lessons from a man whose disability has largely removed him from society.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

A charming and moving debut memoir about how a man with a mystery illness saves a pigeon, and how the pigeon saves the man.

On a spring evening in Montana, Brian Buckbee encounters an injured baby pigeon. Heartbroken after the loss of the love of his life and increasingly isolated by a mysterious illness that overtook him while trekking through Asia, Brian is unaware that this bird—who he names Two-Step—will change his life. Brian takes in Two-Step, and more injured birds, eventually transforming his home into a madcap bird rehabilitation and rescue center. As Brian and Two-Step grow closer, an unexpected kinship forms. But their paths won’t converge forever: as Two-Step heals and finds love, Brian’s condition worsens, and with his friend’s release back into the world looming closer, Brian must decide where this story leaves him.

We Should All Be Birds follows Brian, unable to read or write due to a never-ending headache, as he dictates the end of his old life—as an adventurer, an iconoclastic university instructor, and endurance athlete—through his relationship with a pigeon that comes to define his present. Limited to dictation, Brian teams up with Carol Ann Fitzgerald, an editor who channels the details of his personal history. Raw and perceptive, delirious and devastating, We Should All Be Birds is an unflinching exploration of chronic illness, grief, connection, and the spectacular beauty of the natural world—and the humble pigeon. The surprising, heartwarming relationship between man and bird provides insight into what it means to love, to suffer, and to “never forget, even for a second, how big it all is.”

©2025 Brian Buckbee (P)2025 Simon & Schuster Audio

chronic illness revelations!

For the chronic illness people, for the families of the chronic illness, people, especially for the doctors and nurses of chronically ill people with fibromyalgia et.Cetera! please read this book! Thank you to the author, for bringing forward these things. things I haven't even described to people!
No, this book is not up to par, like Stephen King or anything. And it isn't super well written, but it is good, and it does explain what we go through. Inside and outside of our minds, inside and outside of our bodies. The world becomes a different place when you're chronically ill, especially if nobody can see it.
To the author: I see you. I hear you.
I hold you in my heart. I pray for you.