4.5-STAR REVIEW: THE SPARROW AND THE CROW by Bill Cusano

29 June 2026

About The Book

The Old Cranberry Ladies Garden Club: Book 3
Publication Date: April 30, 2026

Her husband may be dead, but his dealings live on…
Elcira has held this family together for nearly thirty years. She has outlasted a murder accusation, a hostile town, poverty, and enemies who were certain she would fail. Now, with her grandchildren heading south into a Virginia that is arming itself for war, and Chester’s old debts and dealings resurfacing at the worst possible moment, the family she built is pulling apart at the seams.
She is not ready to give up. The old girl has a bit more fight in her.

Her son married a future enemy…
Felix married Lorraine Peters, a plantation owner’s daughter, who left to find her independence. She thought she could give her children a taste of the best of her former life, but soon found they had ideas of their own.

Excerpt

The Review

The Sparrow and the Crow is the third book in The Old Cranberry Ladies Garden Club series by Bill Cusano. It begins in Connecticut on a farm in 1861, but other locations are highlighted.

Events from the previous books are mentioned, explained, put into context, or referenced. The story is told in short chapters by different characters and starts with Elcira, where we left off in the previous book.

The thorough listing of the Cast of Characters, which is posted in the front of the book, gives detailed information on each of them. It’s extremely helpful, especially for those who haven’t read the first two books. Birds are once again important to the story, and we need to learn why this time.

The story moves forward well, even as the family is torn apart in this multigenerational tale, with Elcira as the matriarch, trying her best to keep it together. We watch the family age and grow.

The excerpt from the next book left me wanting more. There are some loose ends and some closure that will hopefully bring us to the next book with characters I’ve grown to love. I wasn’t expecting the ending to be portrayed the way it was.

The Sparrow and the Crow is a multigenerational historical novel with strong characters and many secrets.

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About The Author

Bill Cusano is an author, a retired deacon in the Episcopal Church and a believer that it is the process rather than the outcomes that matter most in our lives. Retired from the corporate world and an eight-year stint running a non-profit feeding program, Bill attacks every project as a ministry, giving it his full commitment. Needing to readjust to life after losing the love of his life to leukemia in April of 2024, Bill returned to writing full-time, resulting in The Old Cranberry Ladies Garden Club series, the motivation and inspiration for which came from his wife’s voracious appetite for reading historical fiction. While this is Bill’s debut novel, he has always been a writer, publishing short stories and poems early on, and then beginning a daily spiritual blog in 2008. You can follow Bill’s Reflections From The Garden Bench along with other writings on his Substack account.