Amanda Cox is the Christy Award–winning author of The Edge of Belonging, The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery, He Should Have Tol the Bees, and Between the Sound and Sea. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Bible and theology and a master’s degree in professional counseling, but her first love is communicating through story. Her studies and her interactions with hurting families over a decade have allowed her to create multidimensional characters that connect emotionally with readers. She lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with her husband and their three children. Learn more at AmandaCoxWrites.com.
Amanda talks about her plot, character, and location choices in this very thoughtful and intentionally written novel.
FF: Please provide a brief summary of The Bitter End Birding Society.
The Bitter End Birding Society is about a young woman who heads to Bitter End, Tennessee, to escape what she feels is undue admiration for handling a traumatic event in her hometown. She hopes to slip away from that attention and be helpful to her great-aunt, but instead, she is nudged into a community of bird-watchers who also happen to be on the hunt for healing from their respective wounds. Along the way, Ana discovers a surprising familial connection with one of her fellow birders that points to a forbidden love from long ago that severed a limb of Ana’s family tree as well as the friendship between two women who live less than a mile apart on the same mountain road.
FF: Your novel weaves together bird-watching, family secrets, and small-town reconciliation. What inspired you to combine these particular elements?
Bird-watching was such a nice backdrop for these characters because anyone can be a bird-watcher, whether you are devoted to appreciating the birds that frequent your backyard or have a library full of birding books, a life list filled with hundreds of species, and all the fancy equipment. Bird-watching is such a great exercise in slowing down and being mindful. The characters, all coming from different places in their own lives, take the coping skills they’ve learned in the woods and apply them to broken relationships within their small town.
FF: The main character, Ana Leigh Watkins, is described as a “hometown hero” seeking respite from attention. Can you talk about why you chose to write about someone running from admiration rather than scandal?
Ana doesn’t feel she deserves the attention she’s been given, and this chance to escape seems like the perfect opportunity to privately process a very publicized event. It was interesting exploring how admiration can be as painful to receive as criticism if the compliment feels undeserved. The settings of Bitter End, Tennessee, and Roan Mountain play a significant role in the story.
FF: What drew you to these locations for your narrative?
One day I decided I wanted to look up unique town names in my home state of Tennessee for possible locations to set my next novel. When I ran across the name Bitter End, I knew that had to be a place with a story and the perfect place to set a book about finding new beginnings. Though Bitter End comes up on my GPS, it was quite the Appalachian Mountain adventure finding the location, and it was even more of an adventure learning about the history of that mountain community. I met a lot of wonderful people on my quest. My original idea for the story was a simple contemporary timeline about a group of bird-watchers. But after hearing more about the history of the area from a staff member at Roan Mountain State Park, I knew a moonshiner’s daughter needed to play a key role in the story.
FF: The amateur bird-watching group seems to adopt Ana Leigh. What role does this unlikely community play in her journey?
Like Ana, each group member is looking for something besides birds. Birds and the beauty found in nature serve as a bit of a gateway to embracing the community and peace they each need. By spending time together studying nature, they learn to pick up on things others miss. They sense that Ana, like them, is searching for something. This group helps her see that she is not alone on the journey of finding healing and wholeness.
FF: How does the historical subplot involving the moonshiner’s daughter and preacher’s son reflect or contrast with present-day themes in the novel?
One of the main ways the present and past reflect one another is that the protagonists in both timelines struggle with how they define themselves. In the past, Viola has always been the moonshiner’s daughter, but when she falls in love with the preacher’s son, she is forced to choose between identifying with her family of origin and a new life as a preacher’s wife. Young Viola finds redefining her life far more complicated than she’d imagined. In the present day, Ana has been called a hero, though she doesn’t feel like one. In fact, she worries that her fears will prevent her from returning to a job she loves. In both timelines, the women attempt to see themselves dichotomously, and each is challenged to embrace two sides of themselves that don’t seem to mesh.
FF: The novel deals with both chosen and biological family. How do you balance these different types of relationships in your storytelling?
I love writing stories about reconciliation and healing in biological families. Those people are often the source of our most foundational relationships and, unfortunately, our deepest wounds. With chosen family, I love showing the beauty of how unlikely people can come into our lives and bring love and connection that we never knew we needed. It reminds me that, no matter our background, we all have something to offer in relationships if we are brave enough to be vulnerable.
FF: Your work often explores family dynamics and healing. What draws you to these themes as a storyteller?
I have always been fascinated by the way family experiences shape people. Those early experiences in life set the course for how a person interacts within the world and how they expect the world to interact with them. There is an endless variety in the types of families that people experience, giving me so many stories to explore. I love analyzing how past experiences impact a character and set them up to navigate their journey on the page.
FF: How did your background in professional counseling influence the way you developed the complex relationships in this story, particularly the sixty-year estrangement between neighbors?
It was interesting to ponder how people cling to grudges for what seems a trivial reason to the outside observer, but to the person holding it, however, the grudge may feel like all they have left to hold on to. It takes a great deal of courage to release something that has ruled lives in the same way this particular grudge has for two characters in this book.
FF: Your previous novels have won multiple awards for their emotional depth. How do you approach writing scenes that resonate so deeply with readers?
My goal for every book is that whoever picks it up will feel seen and heard as they read. For this to occur, I put a lot of my focus on writing characters who wrestle with universal human hopes, dreams, needs, and fears. I do my best to create characters who are authentic, flawed people who don’t have all the answers but are searching for truth. And though my characters don’t always find every answer they are searching for, they are always left holding hope.
FF: What do you hope readers take away from this story about belonging and finding connection in unexpected places?
I hope the book is a reminder to slow down, step outside, and take a deep breath of fresh air. I hope it reminds them that no matter their struggle, they are not searching for hope and healing alone. I also hope that it encourages people to embrace both the beautiful and the not-so-lovely parts of their own stories. Those highs and lows are not what define a person, but rather a person is shaped by how they choose to respond to those moments as they move through life. And even if they’ve responded in a way that they’re not proud of, there are opportunities for restoration and healing ahead of them.
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The Bitter End Birding Society
Amanda Cox
Publisher: Revell
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Released: August 19, 2025
Available Formats: Paperback, Hardcover, Audiobook, eBook
ISBN-10: 0800746619
ISBN-13: 978-0800746612
Book Summary:
A forbidden romance, a fractured family, and one woman’s journey to piece it all together
Hometown hero Ana Leigh Watkins ventures to Bitter End, Tennessee, to help her great-aunt prepare for retirement. A town called Bitter End seems an ironic place for Ana to refresh her weary spirit, but she’s desperate for respite from the attention and unwarranted admiration of her community. While on a hike in Roan Mountain, a ragtag group of amateur bird-watchers takes her under their wing–a little against her will. However, she quickly warms to these genuine souls seeking solace in the great outdoors.
But when Ana’s adventures in Bitter End lead her to a severed branch of her family tree–one that involves the forbidden love between a moonshiner’s daughter and a preacher’s son–what began as a getaway to help her great-aunt becomes a transformative journey that binds together two women who, though they live on the same street, have been estranged for sixty years.
An immersive faith-based novel of finding belonging, reconciliation, and new beginnings for fans of southern fiction. This narrative of friendship and community makes for a perfect book club selection.
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