The Daughters of Erietown
A Novel
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Hidden desires, long-held secrets, and the sacrifices people make for family are at the heart of this powerful first novel by the popular Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist.
“A moving, unforgettable story about time, progress, and how the mistakes of one generation get repeated or repaired by the next.”—J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of Saints for All Occasions
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND NEW YORK POST
1957, Clayton Valley, Ohio. Ellie has the best grades in her class. Her dream is to go to nursing school and marry Brick McGinty. A basketball star, Brick has the chance to escape his abusive father and become the first person in his blue-collar family to attend college. But when Ellie learns that she is pregnant, everything changes. Just as Brick and Ellie revise their plans and build a family, a knock on the front door threatens to destroy their lives.
The evolution of women’s lives spanning the second half of the twentieth century is at the center of this beautiful novel that richly portrays how much people know—and pretend not to know—about the secrets at the heart of a town, and a family.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pulitzer-winner Schultz (for Life Happens ) delivers a sweeping, heartfelt tale that ranges from the mid-1940s through 1994 in Erietown, Ohio, and packs its plot with enough bitter pills to fill a Bruce Springsteen album. Farmers Ada and Wayne Fetters take in their seven-year-old granddaughter, Ellie. As teenagers, Ellie and Brick McGinty fall for each other, despite Ellie's grandparents' concern that Brick will turn out like his abusive father. Brick, though, wins a scholarship to Kent State, which would make him the first person in his family to attend college. Ellie's dream, meanwhile, is to become a nurse, but fate intervenes, and she gets pregnant before they graduate from high school. Ellie and Brick elope, and Brick finds work at an electric plant while Ellie becomes a full-time mother to their daughter, Sam. After Ellie learns that Brick has been unfaithful, she threatens him with divorce, but remains determined to hold their family together. As a child, Sam is fully aware of the tension between her parents but unaware of her father's infidelities until a visitor shows up at their home when she is 12. Schultz enlivens the narrative with sharp cultural commentary and precise period details. This story of family secrets rises above and is tougher than the rest.
