“Wonderful and heartbreaking all at once,” is how I described The Conjurer’s Bird by Martin Davies to my husband upon finishing the novel.

After I made the small mistake of starting a book about a taxidermist while eating lunch, I was rewarded with no further descriptions of the process and an incredible tale of love, loss, and discovery. The story is woven back and forth through history and includes real and fictional characters blending seamlessly.

Davies’s story is his accounting of the Myterious Ulieta Bird seen only once in 1774. He recounts the factual tale of naturalist Joseph Banks and his mistress, the elusive Miss B. Then he goes further by filling in the blanks with his version of what took place.

Interlaced with Banks’s story is that of disenchanted taxidermist, John Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald is drawn into the mystery of searching for the only known specimen of the Ulieta Bird which disappeared from Banks’s collection without explanation two hundred years earlier.

Along the way Fitz and his boarder, the lovely, young Katya, unravel clues that richer, more powerful people than they are also following to discover not only the Ulieta Bird but also botanical drawings worth millions supposedly hidden within the case.

Readers and admirers of A. S. Byatt’s Possession will find a similar, slightly more accessible novel following two stories that converge with a satisfying conclusion. I commend Mr. Davies for keeping the tension high right up to the end where it looks as if all the wrong people triumphed. With well-placed clues, two personal histories within John Fitzgerald’s portion of the story revealing much about the character, and a convincing cast of supporting characters, The Conjurer’s Bird is a worthy novel not to be missed.