[2] Hummingbird House tells the story of Kate Banner, an American midwife caring for patients in 1980s Nicaragua during the Nicaraguan Revolution.
Writing for The New York Times, Jeannie Pyun stated that the message of the novel is that "personal connection is the wellspring of political involvement, and Henley frequently expresses this in expert language."
Pyun also stated that the novel's shifts from third-person narration in the present day to first-person flashbacks may make it difficult to follow the plot.
[5] In 2014, Henley's essay The Potholder Model of Literary Ambition, was published in the anthology A Story Larger Than My Own, in which female authors discuss their craft and look back on their careers.
[6] Henley wrote the play If I Hold My Tongue about four former sex workers living in a halfway house struggling to re-integrate into society.