The Bird Hotel

Maria thinks Irene must be lonely and reminds her not to forget about love.

Irene goes through a drawer of letters Leila left, some of them never opened. She finds a folder of letters describing Charlotte, including a picture, and a letter from Javier telling Leila not to write anymore.

With foreigners introducing new products like junk food and soda, there is suddenly more trash than people know what to do with. There is no garbage removal service in the town. Then Amalia arrives, a woman who was born in communist Germany and spent time in prison. The children of the village adore her and follow her around. Amalia sets the children to work making what she calls an “eco-block” (176): they stuff garbage into a plastic bottle, then seal it with the cap. She has a carpenter make frames and uses these eco-blocks to create walls, and with these she builds houses and public buildings, including a school. In addition to education, health care, and environmental preservation, Amalia crusades for good nutrition, aiming to return the local diet to what it had been before processed and packaged foods entered their world.

Chuck, Vinnie, and John are three aging gringos who have moved to the village, built homes, and given themselves Spanish names. Irene only ever sees them hanging out in Harold’s café, drinking coffee, then beer. They’ve been known to touch young waitresses, uninvited, and they stare at the young girls walking past the café, which makes the girls uncomfortable.

Irene receives paperwork claiming that to own the hotel, she needs to identify a legal representative who is a citizen of the country. Since the documents are in Spanish, Irene has difficulty understanding them and asks Dora to be her power of attorney. Dora warns her that the government would like to take her property away. Dora agrees to go to the lawyer’s office and returns with an envelope of documents. Irene puts them in the drawer.

Gus keeps coming up with new projects, the hotel is never full, and Irene is running out of money. She sees Gus and Dora and their kids often and thinks of them as family. Irene relies on them and keeps writing checks.

A Chinese woman, Jun Lan, comes to stay at the hotel and tells Irene her story. She grew up in a poor, rural family in China during the Cultural Revolution but managed to move to the city and enroll in school, eventually earning her medical doctorate. She is married and wants children but is unable to conceive. Her grandmother told her of a special plant that helped her conceive, but the plant has been eliminated in their region due to pesticides. Jun Lan knows what the herb looks like, however, and the right growing conditions exist around the volcano.

Gus continues to pitch projects to Irene while Jun Lan searches for the herb with Elmer as her guide. One day she finds it, and Maria helps her prepare a tea. Six weeks after she leaves La Llorona, Jun Lan sends a letter saying she is pregnant.

An American couple visits, bringing Nike gear and basketballs, and holds a basketball clinic for the girls of the village. For a week, the girls dominate the court, full of joy, Mirabel among them.

Irene continues to create her paintings of birds, and this attracts Jerome Sapirstein, an American birdwatcher hoping to see a quetzal. He is sweet and enthusiastic, and he is taken with Irene’s work. When he takes her out to dinner, Irene learns that Rosella and Wade are together and expecting children. Jerome wants to collaborate on a book, and he is also interested in Irene romantically. He asks Irene to climb the volcano with him.

Hiking up the volcano, Irene allows herself to consider the possibility that she could have a relationship again, or even children—she thinks that if she had a daughter, she would not be too painfully reminded of the son she lost. Jerome is a good man, very attentive, but not athletic, and he sprains his ankle during their hike.

They spend the night on the mountain, and Jerome tries to be romantic. He recites a poem, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” and puts his arm around Irene. When he kisses her, however, Irene knows she’ll never fall in love with him. And love, she thinks, “was the only thing that made it all make sense to me” (210).

Helen and Jeff Boggs, from Minneapolis, bring their daughter, Sandra, who is seven, to meet her biological mother, whom they have located with the help of a searcher. Irene is charmed by Sandra and agrees to go with the family to meet Sandra’s mother.

They meet with the searcher, Santos, who takes them to a home in a distant village to meet the woman they think is Sandra’s birth mother, but the woman is clearly too old. She shows no interest in Sandra but asks the Boggses for money. Sandra is shocked and crushed. Irene recalls what Leila said about people coming to the lake and finding not what they want, but what they need.

Irene notices that items are disappearing from the hotel. Gus swears that he is not stealing and that he thinks of Irene as a sister. Irene learns that the thief is Elmer. He was saving money to buy land so he could ask Mirabel to marry him, and when his money was stolen, he became desperate. He promises to reform and confesses to Mirabel, who refuses to speak to him.

Elmer fears he has a rival for Mirabel’s affection, a young man named Herman, but Herman decides to enter the priesthood. Elmer has earned enough money to buy his land and declares he will ask Mirabel to marry him.

Mirabel refuses, and Elmer is devastated. Watching his pain, Irene thinks, “I remembered that feeling of loss. I was there once” (229).

Rosella develops preeclampsia and doesn’t survive the delivery of her twins, a boy and a girl.

Irene talks with Amalia and Clarinda, a young girl of around ten who has lost her father and whose mother abuses alcohol. Clarinda wants to be a doctor, and while some people have told her only boys get to be doctors, Amalia says Clarinda can be whatever she wants.

Bud and Victoria Albertson come to stay at the hotel. They are considering buying property in the area. Gus shows them a piece of land that has a deep ravine across it, and Victoria worries that someone might fall in. That afternoon, they visit the village, and afterward, Victoria appears traumatized. Irene learns later that she went to see Andres, the Mayan astrologer, and he drugged and raped her. Both Bud and Victoria are devastated, and Irene remembers what Leila said about every paradise having serpents. She knows that even if Victoria reported Andres to the authorities, because she is a foreigner and a tourist, it is unlikely that anything would be done.

Bud leaves to visit Gus, and when he returns, he seems less burdened. The couple leaves, but Bud doesn’t take the machete he bought. In the village, Andres’s astrology shop is closed, and he has been reported missing. Gus describes the ravine on the property he showed to the Albertsons and says a person would only go there with a machete pressed to their ribs.