Night Bird Cantata

Abandoned without warning by his self-involved mother and cruel, dictatorial grandmother, L.P. is sent off to spend a magical summer in the care of Betty, his grandmother's maid, in black South Phoenix. A former jazz singer at war with inner demons of her own, Betty is the only adult in L.P.'s small universe who has a place in her heart for the troubled boy, offering him a friendship born of shared pain, and the dazzle and the wonder of his childhood's end.
In this singular season of fever dreams, betrayals, loss and rude sexual awakenings, L.P. wills truggle to find a space for himself in a world that does not want him. And in the end, he will have learned many things about the fragile masks adults hide behind and weapons they use to wound, setting him free for flight, like the unseen night birds, singing in the dark.