Disinherited while attending college in New Orleans, Daryl Munroe returns to his hometown in Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Swamp, planning to intimidate his father by setting up an illegal smuggling business. He joins forces with his childhood friend, Michael Duvet, the son of a local jazz musician. His attempt at vengeance becomes a mysterious quest in an area steeped in myth and generational lore and riven by entrenched barriers of class and race. Part fever dream, part cautionary tale, Station of the Birds spins a narrative about fathers and sons, addiction’s hollow banging at the gate, and the ritual sacrifices rooted in agrarian cultures.

A tight, thrilling novel . . . Slim though it may be, Station of the Birds covers an immense amount of territory . . . I felt I’d traveled high roads and low roads; cities and swamps; and, of course, some of the darker secrets of human nature . . . There’s much to recommend about Sussler’s writing: lush, vivid prose; haunting landscapes; a palimpsest of tales and traditions that write into, rather than overtop, each other, creating new landscapes and myths.
—Colin Bishoff, Southern Review of Books----->

Sussler’s lush debut follows a prodigal son’s return to his Louisiana hometown . . . Throughout, she lays bare how the region was shaped by slavery . . . providing a colorful tour through Louisiana’s ill-gotten fortunes and vibrant ways of life. 
—Publishers Weekly

Haunting . . . The heart of the novel is in Sussler’s narrative voice, which favors a uniquely lyrical style . . . No one else writes like Sussler, the editor-in-chief of BOMB Magazine.
—Kirkus Reviews

Betsy Sussler's bracing debut is a delirium of drugs, speedboats, and murder. Tense and intense, it guides us back into the secret waterways of Louisiana's Atchafalaya swamp, and a time when it was governed by old codes and the keeping of old scores—its not-so-distant troubling past.
—Dylan Landis

How could we have guessed that Sussler, the heroic editor-impresario of the irreplaceable BOMB Magazine for decades, had also been cooking up this slinky, visionary gumbo of a novel? The book rewards comparison to Barry Gifford’s Wild at Heart (and the film that came from it), as well as early Robert Stone or Joy Williams, or Denis Johnson’s Already Dead, with a sense of heat and danger all its own.
—Jonathan Lethem

In Station of the Birds, Betsy Sussler has told the fraught story of a conflicted man returning to his hometown in Louisiana. Deeply atmospheric and powerfully dramatic, this is an intense tale of paternal struggle, addiction, and sacrifice. A riveting read.
—Patrick McGrath

In Betsy Sussler’s fascinating Station Of The Birds, Louisiana’s bayous, fields, flora, swamps and history are like characters in this impassioned multi-generational novel. The evocatively detailed settings that Sussler has created nurture and surround Daryl, Michael, Monique, Kyle, and more. The animus and love trade places in their tumultuous friendships; love affairs; bands; and drug deals, when the unwanted and unexpected happen. Nothing is sure, anything is possible. Betsy Sussler’s characters meet their fates, and the birds fly away and return. A beautifully written, sophisticated and smart novel.
—Lynne Tillman

Drawn from the swampland around New Orleans, the music of the South and the drawl of characters born in the mix of genders, cultural backgrounds, language and races that make up the population of this hot and humid part of a larger country, the author has captured real life, lived by real people in the face of real danger—just struggling to survive if not thrive. 
—Linda Bond, Auntie's Bookstore

Betsy Sussler attended Newcomb, the women’s college of Tulane University in New Orleans and graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute with a BFA in 1974. She co-founded BOMB Magazine in 1981 to publish conversations between artists and writers that reflected the way they spoke about the work among themselves and has been its Editor in Chief ever since. Sussler has edited five anthologies: BOMB Interviews, City Lights (1991); BOMB: Speak Art! (1997), Speak Fiction and Poetry! (1998) and Speak Theater and Film! (1999), published by Gordon and Breach; and The Author Interviews (2014) published by Soho Press. ​ Station of the Birds is her first novel, written in the mid-1990s. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York with her two felines, Calliope and Woody Ray.

Photo: Lynne Tillman c. 2002