When Aden gets word that his parents have died in a freak accident, he leaves Chicago to head for his childhood home in New Hope, Pennsylvania. It’s been years since he’s been home or spoken to his family, but as the executor of his parents’ estate, he has to put his feelings aside.
His return is met with anger from his younger siblings, Aliza and Sammy. Aliza has essentially raised Sammy, since their parents were often traveling or neglectful. Aden must also confront one of the main reasons he fled home 10 years ago: Coco Chanel, his parents’ prized Major Mitchell’s cockatoo. Coco got more attention than anyone else in the Shah household.
Frayed by grief, anger, and resentment, one night Aden opens Coco’s cage and lets her fly away. Of course, when his siblings panic about Coco’a disappearance, the three of them hit the road to find her and bring her back home. They follow her tracking chip and tap into a vast network of bird watchers to try and find her.
But what they figured would take just a few days at most turns into a cross-country road trip where everything that can go wrong does. Along the way, they argue, reopen old wounds, and try to process their grief and anger toward one another, their parents, and life in general.
This is a powerful meditation on grief and resentment as well as growing up knowing you’ll never be as important as your avian sibling. I just felt everything repeated itself too much—the failed rescue attempts, the rehashed arguments, and the crazily farcical incidents that arise. The characters’ growth arc took a bit longer than necessary, but the emotions were still very palpable.
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