The arms of God : a novel

Format:

Book

Title:

The arms of God : a novel

Author:

Hinton, Lynne.

ISBN:

9780312347956

Edition:

1st ed.

Publication Information:

New York : St. Martin's Press, 2005.

Physical Description:

254 pages ; 22 cm

Summary:

Alice is making her daughter dinner when her mother Olivia, who left her at a day care center when she was four-years-old, appears at her door. Although Alice has managed to navigate an unforgiving foster care system to build a good life for herself, she has never really recovered from her mother's disappearance. Olivia's sudden reappearance is like a quiet, unexplained gift. Over the next couple of weeks Alice asks Olivia to dinner. Olivia is always dropped off by a friend and sits peacefully as Alice and her daughter talk over the meal. One afternoon Alice gets a call from the hospital telling her that Olivia is dead. The only identification the hospital could find was Alice's number with the word "daughter" written underneath it. She goes to pick up Olivia's things and finds the key to her apartment. It is here that the mystery of Olivia's past is slowly uncovered and Alice begins to understand how the power of hatred can hold a woman down and how the power of friendship can lift her up again.

Subject(s):

Parent and adult child -- Fiction.

Mothers and daughters -- Fiction.

Maternal deprivation -- Fiction.

Abandoned children -- Fiction.

Loss (Psychology) -- Fiction.

Genre:

Psychological fiction.

Domestic fiction.

Domestic fiction

Fiction

Psychological fiction

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Woodburn Public Library	HINTON	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Salem Main Library	Hinton, J.	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Author Notes

Lynne Hinton is from North Carolina. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and her Masters of Divinity degree from Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. She also studied at Wake Forest University and the NC School of the Arts, School of Filmmaking.

While in seminary, Lynne began considering writing and enrolled in literature classes. She is the author of several books, including a nonfiction piece, MEDITATIONS FOR WALKING, and the Hope Springs Trilogy with FRIENDSHIP CAKE, CHRISTMAS CAKE AND WEDDING CAKE.

Lynne also has a mystery series with St. Martin's, written under the name, Jackie Lynn which includes DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE, JACOB'S LADDER, and SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT.

Lynne is a regular columnist with The Charlotte Observer and she has served as a chaplain with hospice and as the pastor of Mount Hope United Church of Christ and First Congregational United Church of Christ, both in North Carolina.

Lynne and her husband, Bob Branard, presently live near Spokane, Washington where Lynne is an interim pastor at the Chewelah United Church of Christ.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

An assured if overly emotive storyteller, Hinton (Friendship Cake) spins the tragic tale of Olivia Jacobs, beginning with Olivia's unexplained appearance at the North Carolina home of her grown daughter, Alice, whom she abandoned decades earlier at a day-care center. When elderly Olivia dies just three weeks after suddenly reentering her daughter's life, Alice, raised in a series of foster homes but now the single mother of a 10-year-old daughter, is left to unlock the mystery of her mother's life from a scrapbook of clues. The bulk of the novel chronicles Olivia's Depression-era childhood and adolescence in rural Smoketown, N.C., the uneasy fringe between two enclaves-one black, one white-where racial tension, violence and fear intrude like choke weed. Olivia's marginalized and impoverished white family-including her neglectful single mother, Mattie, and older brother, Roy-is treated kindly by their African-American neighbors. Olivia and Tree, the girl next door, bridge the racial divide with friendship, but violence and misunderstanding shatter their lives. Olivia's story affords Alice a deeper understanding of both her errant mother and herself. Addressing love, faith, friendship and race, Hinton delivers an overwrought but satisfying apologia for Olivia. Agent, Sally McMillan. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved