Homeless Bird

Homeless Bird is a young adult novel by the American writer Gloria Whelan, published in 2000. It won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature that year.

The novel is set in India and told by Koly, who is married at thirteen to a boy who dies soon afterwards, leaving her a widow in a household that has no further use for her. She is left behind in the city of Vrindavan when her mother-in-law abandons her, and she has to find work, shelter and a way of living that does not depend on anyone else's decision about her. The title comes from a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, and Koly's embroidery is the skill that turns into her means of support. Whelan had never visited India when she wrote the book and worked from reading and from accounts of child widows, which she describes in her afterword.

The novel is written for readers of about Koly's age and keeps the arranged marriage and its consequences in the foreground rather than treating them as background.