The Waiting Time
-
-
3.9 • 8 Ratings
-
-
- $17.99
-
- $17.99
Publisher Description
A new edition of Eugenia Price's final novel, presented by Turner Publishing
From one of America’s best-loved storytellers, The Waiting Time is an ambitious, romantic, historically rich epic, sure to delight new and loyal readers alike.
Spirited Abigail Banes dreams her newly married life coastal Georgia will be lived amid spreading magnolia trees, where lovers walk and whisper along blossom-lined paths. But her dreams are shattered when a fatal accident claims her husband, Eli, leaving her sole proprietor of their rice plantation—and the slaves that work the magnificent land.
Forging a new life for herself, Abby finds a new identity—as a feminist before her time, and abolitionist before there is a way to free slaves. As she struggles with her inheritance, Abby finds herself turning to her new overseer, Thaddeus Greene. And, at a time when love is forbidden to her, Abby realizes Thad is destined to take Eli’s place in her heart. Eli could never have known that by hiring Thad he had given a lasting gift to his beloved wife—for from the moment Abby gazes into Thad’s penetrating gray eyes, she knows she will never be alone again.
With The Waiting Time, Ms. Price felt she had found the perfect title for her book, as it captures the dual strands of this entrancing story: the wait for the beginning of the Civil War and for the end of the time custom dictates Abby must wait before she and Thad can be together. This compelling novel, which brings a human face to a nation braced for Southern secession, embraces the unrelenting passion that marks an incredible love story.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Completed just prior to her death in 1996, Price's (Beauty from Ashes) final novel is ponderously plotted and awash in sweet naivete. Her last chronicle of the Old South begins in the North, as Boston blueblood Abigail (Abby) Barnes marries rice planter Eli Edward Allyn and moves with him to coastal Georgia. But after only five years of marriage, Abigail feels trapped by Eli's silences and his preoccupation with their plantation, Abbeyfield. Then Eli, on his way to rendezvous with an illegal slave ship, drowns in a sudden storm. Left alone with a plantation to run, Abigail finds herself growing closer to her housemaid, Rosa Moon, and spending ever more time with Abbeyfield's handsome overseer, Thad Green. Confused by her feelings about Eli's death, her growing attraction to Thad and her increasing doubts about the morality of slavery, Abbey returns to Boston for a visit. Surrounded by her mother's abolitionist friends, it isn't long before she decides she must free all her slaves. Returning to Georgia, she is encouraged in this plan by Thad, who has proposed marriage. While the fate of Abby's slaves is left unresolved in the wake of John Brown's raid and in the shadow of the looming Civil War, Abby's future with Thad is happily secured. As usual, Price works in only the most primary of emotional colors; although the picture she paints isn't subtle, it's sure to be treasured by her millions of fans. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selections; Crossings main selection.
