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Searching... Dallas Public Library | FICTION - SPENCER | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Amity Public Library | FIC SPENCER | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic Spencer, L. 1996 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Author Notes
LaVyrle Spencer was born in Browerville, Minnesota on July 17, 1943. While working as a teacher's aide at Osseo Junior High School, she started writing her first novel, The Fulfillment, which was published in 1979. She has written more than a dozen novels that have hit the New York Times bestseller list, and many of her works have been condensed for Reader's Digest and Good Housekeeping. She has won five Romance Writers of America RITA Awards for her novels The Endearment, Hummingbird, Twice Loved, The Gamble, and Morning Glory. In 1988, she was inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. Many of her novels have been made into television movies including The Fulfillment, Home Song, and Family Blessings and the major motion picture Morning Glory. She retired from writing in 1997.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A resilient divorcée returns with her three daughters to her childhood hometown; a lonely widower makes the rough journey out of the shell of his own isolated soul; and the perennially bestselling Spencer (Home Song) doesn't miss a beat as she expertly gives them a second chance at love. First, however, they have to suffer. It's the summer of 1916 when Roberta Jewett returns to Camden, Maine, after 18 years. As a divorcée, she finds herself a social outcast and even her mother thinks she's a tramp (besides which she wants to work, of all things, and own a car). What makes her really mad, however, are men. She doesn't like them, having learned, she thinks, all there is to know from her disastrous marriage. But it turns out that the brutes can be both worse and better than she has ever dreamed. On the one hand, there's Elfred, her lecherous brother-in-law, who can hardly keep his mitts off her; on the other hand, there's Gabriel Farley, the widowed carpenter, and she can hardly keep her mind off him. From the very start, Gabe and Roberta are bickering (``Don't you laugh at me, Mr. Farley!.... I shall own a motorcar, come hell or high water.''). Then, little by little, without really trying, they become friends (as do their children). Her hatred of men wanes, his obsession with his dead wife becomes muted and their attraction heats up with the summer. But when Roberta is brutally raped, all her hopes are threatened. Will she be able to pick up the pieces? Can she face family secrets and challenge the town's benighted hypocrisy? Will Gabe do the right thing? Spencer, famous for her heart-rending slices of Americana, delivers the goods again. First serial to Readers Digest; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selections. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Spencer (Home Song, 1995, etc.) switches gears from Minnesota to Maine for a feminist historical set in 1916. When Roberta Jewett, recently divorced from her philandering husband, decides to move her three daughters--Rebecca, 16, Susan, 14, and Lydia, 10--from Boston to her former hometown of Camden, Maine, all kinds of sparks fly. Roberta never anticipated the extent to which she'd be shunned and gossiped about as a divorcée and working mother. Worse, she buys a home, a car--unheard of for a woman--and starts spending time with widower and single father (of Isobel, 14) Gabriel Farley, whom she's hired to fix up her broken-down house. Meanwhile, Roberta's sister Grace and their mother, Myra, secretly envy Roberta's confidence and independence but refuse to accept her seeming emancipation or help her in her transition back into Camden life. Worst of all, Grace's husband Elfred, a notorious womanizer, harasses and fondles Roberta both in public and private; his actions culminate in a violent rape that allows Roberta and Gabriel to admit their real feelings for each other but places Roberta's status in town at an all-time low: Elfred, after all, is a pillar of the community and a business leader and family man to boot. When another pillar of the community--Elizabeth DuMoss (who's spoken up on Roberta's behalf at town meetings, as have the dozens of children who've found fun and warmth at the Jewett home)--comes forward with a confession, Roberta is finally free to pursue true love and create the kind of family and career she's wanted all along. Roberta is appealingly independent and spirited, as are her daughters, but the historical inaccuracies and anachronisms--mainly the modern-day slang--are distracting in a book that, breaking no new ground, needs to be as perfectly tuned as it can.
Booklist Review
Divorcee Roberta Jewett and her three daughters return to her hometown of Camden, Maine, to be close to her mother and sister. But in the early 1900s, a divorced woman is equated with a prostitute, and Roberta faces the disapproval of her family and the suspicions of a closed-minded town. The only welcome Roberta receives in Camden comes from the teenagers who befriend her daughters and from Gabriel Farley, a widower contracted to renovate her home. Gabriel and Roberta's common interest in raising their respective daughters leads to a relationship that survives the disapproval of the townsfolk and a vicious attack on Roberta. Disbelieving Roberta's accusations against her attacker, a group of influential citizens plan to remove Roberta's children from her "immoral" influence, and Roberta and Gabriel's love may not be enough to save the girls. Spencer's last 11 books have been New York Times best-sellers, so expect heavy demand for this book. Incidentally, CBS-TV has two of Spencer's previous books in development with options on a third. (Reviewed December 1, 1995)0399141200Melanie Duncan
Library Journal Review
At the turn of the century in New England, an independent divorcée, progressive before her time, returns to her provincial hometown of Camden, Maine, in order to build a new life for herself and her three daughters. Braving adversaries such as her lecherous brother-in-law, condemning mother, and a community that considers a divorced woman little better than a prostitute, Roberta Jewett behaves "scandalously," securing a job as a county nurse to support her children, learning to drive, and buying a "Model-T car." Roberta is embittered by her humiliating marriage to an outrageous philanderer, but not surprisingly she "finds love" with Gabriel Farley, the gruff yet inwardly sensitive widowered carpenter retained to renovate her home. Although predictable and somewhat belabored, Spencer's latest novel is overall an enjoyable read. Recommended for most libraries, particularly where historical fiction is popular.Marcie S. Zwaik, "Library Journal" (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.