The migrant painter of birds
First sentence
Walter Dias' footsteps again pause on the landing, as they did on that night when he visited his daughter; he slips off his shoes and prepares to continue up the stairs, lithe as a shadow and keeping close to the wall, and I cannot dissuade or stop him, for the simple reason that I want him to reach the last step quickly, to open the door without knocking and to cross the narrow threshold without saying a word...
Description
"The setting of this novel is an old farmhouse in Portugal - a house far enough from the Atlantic not to hear the breaking waves during a storm but near enough for the walls to be corroded by the salt in the air.". "With most members of her large family having left the hardship of life in this landscape of sand and stone for jobs in faraway places, a young woman struggles to piece together her past from the widely varying stories she is told. Left behind by a free-spirited, feckless father, a seducer with a rare gift for drawing, she is raised by her uncle who has married her mother. The only memories of her father's two brief visits are the echoes of his footsteps on the stairs leading to her room. The only signs of him are letters from the widest reaches of the world - letters accompanied by brilliantly colored drawings of exotic birds. The daughter longs for her father and, as she grows up, she is determined to find him and uncover the truth."--BOOK JACKET.