Hummingbird

A young woman discovers her entire life was built on a secret her mother carried to her grave — and sets out across America with a guitar named “Hummingbird” to find the father who has been praying for her by name every day of her life.

Genre: High concept, realistic fiction
State: Re-writing
Rights available: World English / Translation / Film & TV
Audience: New Adult, Adult, Young Adult.
Word count: 79,000 approx
Timeline: Present
Setting: A journey across the USA
Narrative Perspective: Mercy narrates in first person, past tense

Comparables

"The Colour Purple" by Alice Walker, "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac, "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath, "Just Kids" by Patti Smith

Synopsis

Hazen Mercy Wagner has spent her whole life feeling like the wrong puzzle piece dropped into the wrong box — too loud for the Mennonite community that raised her, too broken for the world outside it, too much for everyone who was supposed to love her. When her dying mother presses a journal into her hands and says read it when you're ready, Hazen isn't ready.

She won't be ready for two years. But ready finds you whether you are or not. What she discovers inside those pages — that the cold German farmer she called Dad isn't her biological father, that her real father is a pastor in Mississippi named Jeremiah Jacobson who has been receiving photographs and letters about her twice a year for her entire life — sends her out of Talklein, Missouri in a refurbished Westfalia van with a Gibson Hummingbird guitar and a name on a napkin.

What follows is the journey of a young woman with bipolar disorder, a blues musician's soul, and a childhood secret she didn't know she was carrying, navigating a country that keeps offering her both beauty and damage in equal measure — until she finally walks through the door of a diner in Los Angeles and says four words she never planned to say. Daddy. It's me.

Teaser

I slip the crinkled paper back into my pocket.
The rain has stopped but puddles remain here and there, rainbow grease on their surfaces reflecting the world back distorted. I'm leaning against the van staring at the house—small, two units, screen doors, a window on each side. Where the number should be there's only a rusty outline. Fifty-one, I think.
The roof is metal, rusted to burnt umber with little memory of the original silver grey. Under the eaves some plastic panels hang loose. The siding carries a brownish stain from years of decomposed leaves. The deck floor is aged grey wood dotted with green moss and black mold, warped and uneven, looking none too sturdy. Two rocking chairs, both well used and nearly as grey as the floor, sit on the far side of each door.
The struggling lawn has recently been mowed. It's the only sign of active life, aside from an American flag on a rust-bleeding pole in the center, snapping in the wind.
Marge overlooked the two doors and single house number. I play eeny-meeny-miney-moe and land on the left. The deck stairs squeak under me but hold. I tap the wood frame of the screen—it rattles. Nothing. I knock harder and the door bounces off the inner frame. Still nothing. I try the other door. Nothing.
I turn and stand on the edge of the deck looking for any sign of life from the neighboring houses. Quiet everywhere, only a dog barking somewhere and birds singing. The animals are mocking me. I probably look like a fool standing here, lost in just about every aspect of life.
Time. That's what the Lord keeps offering me and it's the one thing my anxious mind can't do anything with. When your thoughts are full of unloved feelings and over-used worry, time is not your friend.