{"product_id":"the-quickening-isbn-9781590513460","title":"The Quickening","description":"\u003cb\u003eA July 2010 Indie Next Pick\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEnidina Current and Mary Morrow live on neighboring farms in the flat, hard country of the upper Midwest during the early 1900s. This hardscrabble life comes easily to some, like Eddie, who has never wanted more than the land she works and the animals she raises on it with her husband, Frank. But for the deeply religious Mary, farming is an awkward living and at odds with her more cosmopolitan inclinations. Still, Mary creates a clean and orderly home life for her stormy husband, Jack, and her sons, while she adapts to the isolation of a rural town through the inspiration of a local preacher. She is the first to befriend Eddie in a relationship that will prove as rugged as the ground they walk on.  Despite having little in common, Eddie and Mary need one another for survival and companionship. But as the Great Depression threatens, the delicate balance of their reliance on one another tips, pitting neighbor against neighbor, exposing the dark secrets they hide from one another, and triggering a series of disquieting events that threaten to unravel not only their friendship but their families as well.\u003cbr\u003e   In this luminous and unforgettable debut, Michelle Hoover explores the polarization of the human soul in times of hardship and the instinctual drive for self-preservation by whatever means necessary. \u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eQuickening \u003c\/i\u003estands as a novel of lyrical precision and historical consequence, reflecting the resilience and sacrifices required even now in our modern troubled times.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor information, tour dates, and reading group resources, visit www.michellehoover.net.“A finely-crafted debut . . . vivid, fascinating . . . The novel grows richer with each page as Hoover’s quiet lyricism gradually asserts itself . . . Hoover has a gift.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In its deceptively simple, hypnotic prose and its attempt to understand, through fiction, the inner lives of long-lost rural characters who left few records behind, \u003ci\u003eThe Quickening\u003c\/i\u003e inevitably recalls \u003ci\u003eSo Long, See You Tomorrow\u003c\/i\u003e [by] William Maxwell.”—\u003ci\u003eMinneapolis Star-Tribune\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In Hoover’s début, the quiet struggle between two Midwestern farm women has the stark simplicity of a Biblical parable....The book’s lament for a lost way of life—one in which people ‘looked in hope to the ground and the roots growing there more often than we looked for grace from the sky’—has a mournful beauty.”—\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“With prose as stark as the Midwestern landscape the novel is set in, Hoover brings a pair of early 20th century farm wives vividly to life.” —\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Michelle Hoover’s debut novel is a haunting, beautifully told story that explores the hardships of the Great Depression by focusing on two families. . . Hoover writes with such emotional clarity. . .A captivating and heartfelt first novel.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eBookPage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Expertly crafted and authentic.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003ePoets \u0026amp; Writers\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Engrossing . . . Hoover burns away the glamour of the pioneer life, blending history and brilliant storytelling. [A] standout novel.” —\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e (starred)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A vivid, pastoral panorama.” —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In this finely wrought and starkly atmospheric narrative, Hoover's characters carry deep secrets, and their emotions are as intense as the acts of nature that shape their world.” —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly \u003c\/i\u003e(starred)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I grew up among Iowa farm women, and Michelle Hoover has perfectly captured their voices and stories with great wisdom, tenderness, and beauty.”—Ted Kooser, U. S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Just as the women and men in this strikingly assured debut novel wrest life out of the land they work, Michelle Hoover wrests from her characters' hearts, and from this heart-touching story, understandings rich in complexity and compassion.  She paints the intricacies of their interiors as skillfully as she does the details of the world that surrounds them.  What a gift she has given us in this wise book that lets us so vividly experience both.”—Josh Weil, author of \u003ci\u003eThe New Valley\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“From the very first sentence of Michelle Hoover’s debut novel, I was captured. More than once, I paused while reading to savor her elegant prose and the hauntingly beautiful story she tells of two farmwives bound by loneliness and their cruel circumstances. \u003ci\u003eThe Quickening \u003c\/i\u003eis a stunning debut by an astonishingly gifted writer with a long career ahead of her.”—Amy Greene, author of \u003ci\u003eBloodroot\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Michelle Hoover's fine debut novel recreates for us a way of life and a set of personalities that have vanished from our current scene, and she does so with a solidity of detail that will impress these people and these places forever on your memory.” —Charles Baxter, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Feast of Love\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Though \u003ci\u003eThe Quickening\u003c\/i\u003e is her first novel, Michelle Hoover does what all the best writers steeped in a particular place do—use that place as a conduit to the universal and timeless mysteries of the heart.  What an exceptional debut this book is.” —Ron Rash, author of \u003ci\u003eSerena\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Quickening\u003c\/i\u003e is a rare jewel of a novel: an elegantly structured page-turner driven as much by its exquisite lyricism as it is by the gripping story at its core. It wondrously weaves a riveting half-century of American Midwestern history through the sensual, intimate, often strange details that make up a life. Michelle Hoover is a stunning writer and this is a fierce and beautiful book.” —Maud Casey, author of \u003ci\u003eGenealogy\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“From the opening pages of this beautiful novel, I found myself immersed in the lives of these two farm women between the wars and their struggles with their families, themselves, the land and each other. \u003ci\u003eThe Quickening\u003c\/i\u003e is such a fully realized, sensually vivid, psychologically intelligent novel that it's hard to believe it is a debut, but it is and a sparkling one.” —Margot Livesey\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Michelle Hoover’s writing is brilliant and gutsy. She sees deeply, with great wisdom and compassion, and she creates characters who are complex and authentic.” —Ursula Hegi \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Quickening,\u003c\/i\u003e through its carefully wrought, precise prose, builds with a heartrending power that lingers long after the final page. Michelle Hoover is a writer to watch.” —Don Lee\u003cb\u003eMichelle Hoover \u003c\/b\u003eteaches writing at Boston University and Grub Street and\u003cbr\u003ehas published fiction in \u003ci\u003eConfrontation\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Massachusetts Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ePrairie Schooner\u003c\/i\u003e, and\u003ci\u003e Best New American Voices\u003c\/i\u003e, among others.\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eShe has been a Bread Loaf Writer’s\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eConference scholar, the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University, a\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eMacDowell fellow, a Pushcart Prize nominee,\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eand in 2005 the winner of the PEN\/New\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eEngland Discovery Award for Fiction. She\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003ewas born in Ames, Iowa, the granddaughter\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eof four longtime farming families.Together my sons stood with the sow between them and watched their father\u003cbr\u003estagger home, going slow, unable to get his footing. The rain hissed and grew,\u003cbr\u003emaking rivers in the mud, and my sons squinted under their hats and tried to\u003cbr\u003efind their father through the storm.\u003cbr\u003e   But none of us could see him now. That was the way he went, walking off\u003cbr\u003ethrough the mud, the last I saw of the man I married, the man I knew—he\u003cbr\u003ewould always be gone after that, a man of fog and temper, he would never come\u003cbr\u003eback, not for the six more years that I would live with him and scrub his shirts\u003cbr\u003eand cook his meals. Those Currents had trapped him. They had promised they\u003cbr\u003ewould do what they should and sent him off to have to finish it, coming home\u003cbr\u003ewith stains so dark on his sleeves that I had to turn that shirt to rags. After he\u003cbr\u003ewalked off in that rain, you could no longer say we were husband and wife—we\u003cbr\u003ewere little more than strangers. Later when the body of that man went, his passing\u003cbr\u003ewas quick, without a shiver, without absolution. I found him again in our\u003cbr\u003ebed, stiff and cold where I woke in the morning next to him, clutching the blanket.\u003cbr\u003eStill nothing more than a stone sat inside my chest, because my husband had \u003cbr\u003ealready disappeared from me years ago in that storm.","brand":"Other Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303851905253,"sku":"NP9781590513460","price":14.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590513460.jpg?v=1767741136","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-quickening-isbn-9781590513460","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}