SWIFT : a memoir

Written in the six weeks following the sudden death of Mat, the author’s husband and soul mate,
Swift
is a memoir that unfolds, breath by breath, as the narrator swoops through shock, fury, unspeakable sorrow. She must simultaneously save the life of a baby fledgling Swift, that she rescued seven days before her beloved left Earth.

She somehow keeps the half-dead Swift alive through the blur of grief, but she has no real clue what’s she’s doing. Mat was the one who knew all about birds. He was the man with the heart of feathers who identified the rescue bird as a Little Swift when she brought it home.
Mat told her many things about the bird; that it never touches the ground, that it eats, sleeps, drinks and mates on the wing. That it’s a bird that can fly for up to a year without landing.
In the aftermath of his shocking departure, and all its absurd bureaucratic requirements, an unlikely long-distance Swift guide appears in Ferguson’s DMs on old Twitter. Her name is Hannah, a hardcore Swift activist from the UK.
Ferguson is mesmerised by the Swift Queen’s ethereal beauty and the tattoos of Swifts across her back. An unspoken pact is forged between the two women across the oceans and mountains; a pact that takes on mythical proportions.
If the Swift doesn’t fly within a short window period, it will refuse to eat and eventually starve itself to death.
With time running out for the bird to fledge and carry her deceased soul mate’s tortured soul, its release becomes not only urgent, but hugely symbolic.
The stories we tell ourselves are everything.
Set in a South African fire-scorched landscape, Swift is a unique and brilliant meditation love, loss, soul contracts and the strange intelligence grief unlocks when the heart is cracked wide open.
A magically luminous memoir about release – and the moment three souls collide and take flight.