I picked this book up because it has an interesting cover, of a silhouetted owl with glowing red eyes, and because Aimee Pokwatka’s previous book, Self Portrait with Nothing was recommended somewhere. I read her new novel instead. Also because, how can you resist a book about “murder owls?”

The Parliament is a mystery thriller about twenty-five people trapped in a library on a random Thursday by . . . yes, a swarm of vicious owls. It starts innocently enough as a well-written portrait of small town life from the perspective of a mildly obsessive and withdrawn young woman. Madigan, also called Mad, has returned to the hometown she escaped, to teach a middle-school-level science class at the library. Everything is proceeding as expected—the gossiping librarians, the elderly book club, the mysterious guy-meeting upstairs, and the science class—until the owls kill someone. No one mentions Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” They name the horde surrounding the library “the parliament.”

A parallel story emerges when Mad decides to read aloud from her favorite book, a little-known fantasy called “The Silent Queen.” That story, of a world where women literally give up body parts (involuntarily) to gain magical powers, is perhaps more distressing than the owls. But the trapped people, particularly the kids, seem to be gaining some courage and coping skills from the reading.

It is perhaps important that this particular town had a school shooting, not recently, but when Mad herself was in middle school. Mad has never gotten over that day, when her best friend died right in front of her. It is not something that can be forgotten. But for the kids in her library science class, it’s only a legend. Now those students have a trauma all their own. The book is a lovely exploration of trauma and its aftermath, and how it can be overcome even though it never really goes away.