Flora
A Novel
by Gail Godwin
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Pub Date May 07 2013 | Archive Date Apr 30 2013
Description
Ten-year-old Helen and her summer guardian, Flora, are isolated together in Helen's decaying family house while her father is doing secret war work in Oak Ridge during the final months of World War II. At three Helen lost her mother and the beloved grandmother who raised her has just died. A fiercely imaginative child, Helen is desperate to keep her house intact with all its ghosts and stories. Flora, her late mother's twenty-two-year old first cousin, who cries at the drop of a hat, is ardently determined to do her best for Helen. Their relationship and its fallout, played against a backdrop of a lost America will haunt Helen for the rest of her life.
This darkly beautiful novel about a child and a caretaker in isolation evokes shades of The Turn of the Screw and also harks back to Godwin's memorable novel of growing up, The Finishing School. With its house on top of a mountain and a child who may be a bomb that will one day go off, Flora tells a story of love, regret, and the things we can't undo. It will stay with readers long after the last page is turned.
Advance Praise
"This is a luminously written, heartbreaking book." —John Irving
"A classic southern tale galvanic with decorous yet stabbing sarcasm and jolting tragedy…. Godwin’s under-your-skin characters are perfectly realized, and the held-breath plot is consummately choreographed. But the wonder of this incisive novel of the endless repercussions of loss and remorse at the dawn of the atomic age is how subtly Godwin laces it with exquisite insights into secret family traumas, unspoken sexuality, class and racial divides, and the fallout of war while unveiling the incubating mind of a future writer."—Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
"As usual with Godwin, the protagonists are surrounded by secondary characters…. Unsparing yet compassionate; [FLORA is] a fine addition to Godwin’s long list of first-rate fiction bringing 19th-century richness of detail and characterization to the ambiguities of modern life."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[A] stirring and wondrous novel from Godwin…. [her] thoughtful portrayal of their boredom, desires, and the eventual heartbreak of their summer underscores the impossible position of children, who are powerless against the world and yet inherit responsibility for its agonies."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Marketing Plan
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781620401200 |
| PRICE | $26.00 (USD) |
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