Alabama native Charles Brookins Taylor grew up listening to the whippoorwills while sitting on the porch, and those memories are the foundation of his new book “In Search of the Whip-poor-will Love Song.”

 

Taylor, an U.S. Air Force veteran who returned to Butler, Alabama after a three decade career teaching in Long Island, New York, said returning to his porch after retirement in 2001 led to the discovery of the whippoorwills’ true message.

 

“I was sitting out there one night and I said, ’That whippoorwill isn’t saying its name. It’s saying something else,’” he said. “And so I was able to make a recording.”

 

With the help of a professional recording company, Taylor isolated the recording and slowed it down to hear what the bird was saying. Instead of saying “whippoorwill,” as commonly thought, he said, the recording proved the bird was actually saying, “It’s really real.”

 

“And me being a Baptist minister, I was reading Psalm 19:1, which says, ‘The heavens declare the glory of God,’ which really means that every element, every creature of God’s creation, proclaims God’s power and His greatness and glory, each in his own language, and the whippoorwill is no exception,” he said. “So God is using the whippoorwill to tell us, ‘It’s really real.’”

 

The experience led Taylor to write “In Search of the Whip-poor-will Love Song,” which is intended to carry the same message. Through three generations of characters, the book shows God’s love to readers, he said.

 

“In Search of the Whip-poor-will Love Song” is Taylor’s third book, following “Searching for Heroes in Life,” which published in 2025, and “Searching for Heroes in Life: What the Coronavirus tells us about heroes,” which was published in 2021. Both earlier books highlight the contributions of people in the community not often thought of as heroes, Taylor said.

 

During the first day of a new school year while teaching, Taylor said he always asked new students what they wanted to be when they grew up. Typical answers included football players, doctors, famous actors and other glamorous careers, he said. Heroes, however, don’t need to have high paying careers, powerful positions or piles of accolades. Instead, they are people using their gifts to help others.

 

“Essentially, in those two books, I’m saying that God most often uses people from the ordinary rank to be heroes, because a simple definition of being a hero is anyone who helps meet your everyday needs or encourages you to go forward in life,” he said. “Those are the real heroes.”

 

The message resonated with the students, Taylor said, and helped them appreciate the world around them.

 

Through his new book, Taylor said he hopes readers will find encouragement, take the opportunity to step outside and listen to creation singing praises to God.