In this month’s excellent crop of new novels, Kazuo Ishiguro returns with a fable-like story, a poet makes her much-discussed debut with a modern retelling of Madame Bovary, and Coco Chanel stars in a novel inspired by the fashion queen’s life.
Emmaline Nelson and her sister Birdie grow up in the hard, cold rural Lutheran world of strict parents, strict milking times, and strict morals. Marriage is preordained, the groom practically predestined. Though it's 1958, southern Minnesota did not see changing roles for women on the horizon. Caught in a time bubble between a world war and the ferment of the 1960's, Emmy doesn't see that she has any say in her life, any choices at all. Only when Emmy's fiancé shows his true colors and forces himself on her does she find the courage to actfalling instead for a forbidden Catholic boy, a boy whose family seems warm and encouraging after the sere Nelson farm life. Not only moving to town and breaking free from her engagement but getting a job on the local newspaper begins to open Emmy's eyes. She discovers that the KKK is not only active in the Midwest but that her family is involved, and her sense of the firm rules she grew up underand their effectchanges completely. Amy Scheibe's A FIREPROOF HOME FOR THE BRIDE has the charm of detail that will drop readers into its time and place: the home economics class lecture on cuts of meat, the group date to the diner, the small-town movie theater popcorn for a penny. It also has a love storythe wrong love giving way to the rightand most of all the pull of a great main character whose self-discovery sweeps the plot forward.
Emmaline Nelson and her sister Birdie grow up in the hard, cold rural Lutheran world of strict parents, strict milking times, and strict morals. Marriage is preordained, the groom practically predestined. Though it's 1958, southern Minnesota did not see changing roles for women on the horizon. Caught in a time bubble between a world war and the ferment of the 1960's, Emmy doesn't see that she has any say in her life, any choices at all. Only when Emmy's fiancé shows his true colors and forces himself on her does she find the courage to actfalling instead for a forbidden Catholic boy, a boy whose family seems warm and encouraging after the sere Nelson farm life. Not only moving to town and breaking free from her engagement but getting a job on the local newspaper begins to open Emmy's eyes. She discovers that the KKK is not only active in the Midwest but that her family is involved, and her sense of the firm rules she grew up underand their effectchanges completely. Amy Scheibe's A FIREPROOF HOME FOR THE BRIDE has the charm of detail that will drop readers into its time and place: the home economics class lecture on cuts of meat, the group date to the diner, the small-town movie theater popcorn for a penny. It also has a love storythe wrong love giving way to the rightand most of all the pull of a great main character whose self-discovery sweeps the plot forward.
A Fireproof Home for the Bride: A Novel
384A Fireproof Home for the Bride: A Novel
384Paperback
Related collections and offers
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780594682486 |
---|---|
Publisher: | St. Martin's Press |
Publication date: | 03/22/2016 |
Pages: | 384 |
Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d) |