Sign-In
Cart
Against the Ruins
Paperback
Historical FictionLiterary Fiction
Publisher Price: $17.95
ISBN13: 9781475917376
Publisher: Authorhouse
Published: Jun 14 2012
Pages: 260
Weight: 0.88
Height: 0.61 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
On a December day in 1957, schoolteacher Louise Copeland and her six-year-old daughter, Lyra, come home to discover that Louise's gentle war-hero husband has suddenly become psychotic and has slashed his wrist with a razor blade.
From that moment on, everything Louise has believed in unravels. In their inner-city Southern neighborhood, situated between a cemetery and a madhouse, a place of leafy oak trees and ghosts, three other people become involved in Louise's crisis: Rosa, the scandalous divorcee who entertains men for a living; Uta, the mysterious elderly lady who casts spells; and Max, the clairvoyant gravedigger.
In 2004, as Louise is dying, her daughter returns home, and she and her mother confront how the family was torn asunder in 1957. Louise finally reveals the long-held secret that haunted the family for the next fifty years.
This poignant novel is a gripping drama of madness and prejudice in which a mother leaves her daughter, ultimately, with hope.
Praise for Linda Lightsey Rice
Against the Ruins contains such gorgeous writing that it nearly takes your breath away, with a sense of humor and a fine appreciation of the ridiculous even amid great agony.
-Natalie Goldberg
Rice has a fiery, incandescent talent.
-Pat Conroy
1 different editions
Also available
Also in
Literary Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
Philip Roth: Novels 1973-1977 (Loa #165): The Great American Novel / My Life as a Man / The Professor of Desire
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
John Updike: Novels 1978-1984 (Loa #339): The Coup / Rabbit Is Rich / The Witches of Eastwick
Updike, John
Hardcover
The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk
St Aubyn, Edward
Paperback