More Miracle Than Bird

On the eve of World War I, twenty-one-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees meets the acclaimed poet W. B. Yeats at a soiree in London. Although Yeats is famously eccentric and many years her senior, Georgie is drawn to him, and when he extends a cryptic invitation to a secret society, her life is forever changed.

As zeppelins stalk overhead and bombs bloom against the skyline, Georgie finds purpose tending to injured soldiers in a makeshift hospital. She befriends the wounded and heartbroken Lieutenant Pike, who might need more from her than she is able to give. At night, she escapes with Yeats into a darker world, becoming immersed in the Order, a clandestine society of ritual and magic. As forces - both of this world and the next - pull Yeats and Georgie closer together and then apart, Georgie uncovers a secret that threatens to undo it all.

In bright, commanding prose, author Alice Miller illuminates the fascinating and unforgettable courtship of Georgie Hyde-Lees and W. B. Yeats. A sweeping tale of faith and love, lost and found and fought for, More Miracle than Bird ingeniously captures the moments - both large and small - on which the fates of whole lives and countries hinge.

Alice Miller is the author of a novel, More Miracle than Bird, and three collections of poetry, including the forthcoming What Fire.

Alice's poems can be found in Poetry Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry London, The Poetry Review and The New Republic. A graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and the International Institute of Modern Letters, Alice has received a BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award, a Glenn Schaeffer Fellowship at the Iowa Writers Workshop, a fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany, and has also travelled to Antarctica courtesy of Antarctica New Zealand. She has worked as an historian, a poetry lecturer, and a writer and editor for the United Nations.

Born and raised in Wellington, New Zealand, and having lived in a few corners of the world, Alice is currently based in Berlin, Germany.