In the vein of Small Fry or  Priestdaddy, No Ordinary Bird  is a compelling father-daughter story that reads like true crime, haunted by a question the dashing and mysterious Lamar Chester had always taught his daughter to ask: “ How do you tell the good guys from the bad? ” Artis was five when a plane crash killed her beloved father. For years, it was simply called “the accident.” But many things weren’t getting discussed. Like Lamar himself—a swashbuckling, larger-than-life pilot, a doting father and husband, and the most popular farmer in Georgia. Or that the IRS had immediately taken everything: the chickens, the airplanes, the islands in the Bahamas. . . . Afterwards, Artis and her mother broke contact with everyone and fled, rebuilding from the bottom up as if Lamar’s big, wild life had never happened. Years later, a friend tells Artis Lamar’s plane was sabotaged: her father had been one of the biggest drug smugglers in Miami in the 1970s. At the time of his death, he was about to testify in a trial that had swept up everyone from the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, to a US district attorney, to the Colombian drug cartels. But the deeper Artis digs, the more unexpected the story becomes. Beyond the dramatic betrayals, dangerous drug lords, and geopolitical intrigue is the beating heart of this riveting memoir: a daughter’s grappling with a dark legacy and her memories of the father who had been the light of her life. Who are the good guys, who are the bad guys, and is there a difference at all? “There are many wonderful memoirs lining the shelves of bookstores today, but how many of these true stories can be deemed so powerful as to move a reader to tears? Joan Didion's  The Year of Magical Thinking  is one that comes to mind, and, more recently,  Wave , Sonali Deraniyagala's memoir of immense loss in the 2004 tsunami. Artis Henderson's stunning debut memoir,  Unremarried Widow , is guaranteed to join the ranks of memoirs that will be talked about for years to come. . . . Truly unforgettable.” - Minneapolis Star Tribune on Unremarried Widow “A powerful look at mourning as a military wife. . . . You can finish it in a day and find yourself haunted weeks later.” - New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice) on Unremarried Widow “A frank, poignant memoir about an unlikely marriage, a tragic death in Iraq and the soul-testing work of picking up the pieces.” - People on Unremarried Widow “Charm and candor reside in abundance. . . . A singular, transformative account.” - San Francisco Chronicle on Unremarried Widow “Artis Henderson's grief becomes our gift in her piercingly beautiful memoir. . . . It is exceptional both because Henderson is a fine, spare and unsentimental writer—and because many if not most of us are never this close to the sorrow and upheaval a military loss brings.” - Buffalo News on Unremarried Widow “The book is a brave, unforgettable rendering of a young woman's difficult struggle to let go of one life and slowly embrace another. Not to mention the terrible, human cost of prolonged war.” - Palm Beach Post (Book of the Month) on Unremarried Widow "This deeply felt portrait is as riveting as it is moving." - People “A stranger-than-fiction story packed with sabotage, betrayal, and international intrigue. But at the heart… about gut-wrenching grief, which Henderson writes about with remarkable grace.” - Columbia Magazine “One part true crime saga, and one part biography of a poor Georgia farmer turned pilot turned multimillionaire drug runner who was killed in a strange plane crash– Henderson’s father.” - CrimeReads "Meticulously researched and painfully honest, this memoir expertly situates a single extraordinary life within the larger historical context of governmental corruption and the international drug trade (without giving anything away, we’ll just say that this story goes  all  the way to the top). Part true-crime thriller, part tender elegy, and entirely unforgettable.” - Oprah Daily A BookRiot "Best New Nonfiction" * An Oprah Daily and People "Best Book" * A Newsday and Columbia Magazine "New Book" * A Shelf Awareness "Best Book of the Week" A Wall Street Journal "Book We Read This Week" "Modest and restrained storytelling that packs an unexpected punch.” - Kirkus Reviews "Mesmerizing....(an) eloquent record of grief. 'I want to resent him for creating a life that put both strangers and the people he loved in danger,' she writes. 'But I can't make myself feel any of that. All I feel is an overwhelming sense of loss.' Thanks to the force of her narration, readers will feel it too - Wall Street Journal “With twists and turns that feel propulsively surreal, Artis’s story reads like fiction. But behind it all is a steady pulse, the heartbeat of a daughter in search of the truth.” - Annabelle Tometich, Southern Book Prize winning author of The Mango Tree Artis Henderson 's work has appeared in the New York Times , The Daily Beast ,