When Catherine Gehrig, a museum conservator in London, falls into grief after
her lover?s sudden death, her boss gives her a special project. She will bring
back to ?life? a nineteenth-century mechanical bird. As she begins to piece the
automaton together, Catherine also uncovers the diaries of Henry Brandling, who,
more than a hundred years prior, had commissioned the bird for his very ill son.
Catherine finds resonance and comfort in Henry?s story. But it is the mechanical
creature itself, in its uncanny imitation of life, that will link these two
people across a century. Through the clockwork bird, Henry and Catherine will
confront the mysteries of creation, the power of human invention, and the body?s
astonishing chemistry of love and feeling.