Valentine
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!
Written with the haunting emotional power of Elizabeth Strout and Barbara Kingsolver, an astonishing debut novel that explores the lingering effects of a brutal crime on the women of one small Texas oil town in the 1970s.
Mercy is hard in a place like this . . .
It’s February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom. While the town’s men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems to follow.
In the early hours of the morning after Valentine’s Day, fourteen-year-old Gloria Ramírez appears on the front porch of Mary Rose Whitehead’s ranch house, broken and barely alive. The teenager had been viciously attacked in a nearby oil field—an act of brutality that is tried in the churches and barrooms of Odessa before it can reach a court of law. When justice is evasive, the stage is set for a showdown with potentially devastating consequences.
Valentine is a haunting exploration of the intersections of violence and race, class and region in a story that plumbs the depths of darkness and fear, yet offers a window into beauty and hope. Told through the alternating points of view of indelible characters who burrow deep in the reader’s heart, this fierce, unflinching, and surprisingly tender novel illuminates women’s strength and vulnerability, and reminds us that it is the stories we tell ourselves that keep us alive.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In this emotionally charged drama, the west Texas town of Odessa becomes bitterly divided after a horrific event changes it forever. When 14-year-old Gloria Ramirez suffers a brutal assault in an oil field in 1976, she tries to reach safety at a nearby farmhouse. But before the teen even has a chance to tell her story, the townsfolk are already embroiled in conflict over who’s to blame, bringing up uncomfortable issues of race and class. Author Elizabeth Wetmore draws us right into this stoic community full of people who can’t (or won’t) accept reality, even if it means trading justice for scandal, hysterics, and controversy. With a cast of characters spanning all ages and many different walks of life, narrators Cassandra Campbell and Jenna Lamia made us feel intimately close to the women and girls struggling through this ordeal in a world that’s so unfairly stacked against them. This unforgettable story is a gorgeous and heartbreaking reminder of the strength that women find in each other, even in incredibly trying circumstances.
Customer Reviews
So sad it’s over
I’m heartbroken that I’ve finished this book, and that the author hasn’t released another yet. It was incredible and I’ll definitely watch for more.