A Place of Forgetting [Kindle Edition]

Carolyn J. Rose (Author)

Book Description

1966. As summer ends in Maplekill, New York, the dreams of 19-year-old Liz Roark turn to dust. A girl known only as April arrives carrying a duffel bag of bright clothing and an engagement ring from Liz’s childhood sweetheart Ben Hoyt, a Marine missing in action in Vietnam.

Grieving for Ben and for what she thought was love, Liz flees small-town sympathy and humiliation, heading for Chicago to study journalism. But April hijacks the journey, steering them to a remote Arkansas farm and a psychic she hopes will validate her yearning for fame and fortune.

Ripped off and stranded on the psychic’s mountaintop with only a few dollars and a copy of Walden, Liz learns powerful lessons about trust, betrayal, deception, determination, love, and whether the psychic’s vision of tragedy must come to pass.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Carolyn J. Rose is the author of several novels, including Hemlock Lake, Through a Yellow Wood, An Uncertain Refuge, Sea of Regret, A Place of Forgetting, and No Substitute for Murder. The sequel to that, No Substitute for Money, will be out in the late spring of 2013. She also penned a young adult fantasy, Drum Warrior, with her husband, Mike Nettleton.

She grew up in New York's Catskill Mountains, graduated from the University of Arizona, logged two years in Arkansas with Volunteers in Service to America, and spent 25 years as a television news researcher, writer, producer, and assignment editor in Arkansas, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. She founded the Vancouver Writers' Mixers and is an active supporter of her local bookstore, Cover to Cover. Her interests are reading, gardening, and not cooking.

Product Details

• File Size: 403 KB
• Print Length: 275 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0983735913
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B005QRPSKE
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #119,028 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 52 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars bought it for the setting, loved it for the story October 21, 2011

By Glenda G W North

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Unlike the previous reviewer, I've never met the author. But I feel like I went to school with her protagonist, and lived in that home town. Her characters are flawed, caring, snarky, superficial, kind, lazy, ambitious, giving, self-reliant, self-centered, brave, and liars -- in other words, they are carefully drawn and multi-faceted -- real people. The story carried me on like a swift-running creek, with something new just around each bend. Highly recommended.

BTW I read this on Kindle, and only found ONE typo in the whole book! Kudos to the editor/proofreader, as well as the author for caring about quality.

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A TOUCHING STORY WONDERFULLY WRITTEN September 30, 2011

By Elizabeth Lyon

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

First, a disclosure: I am a long-time friend of the author and I am in her dedication for this book. I am also a freelance book editor of over 20 years, unable to dismiss the urge to criticize or edit everything I read.

This is a special book, wonderfully written.

Few things can make Elizabeth Roarke's life worse: Ben, her childhood best friend and presumed husband to be, is MIA in Vietnam, and a strange and unknown girl, April, flashes an engagement ring saying he proposed mere hours before his deployment. In A Forgetting Place, Carolyn J. Rose, author of An Uncertain Refuge, writes another stirring novel where nothing is as expected, for Elizabeth or for the reader. Her journey is our journey--fleeing from and fleeing toward change; fleeing from heartbreak toward impossible dreams; and fleeing from the ties that bind toward friendships freely chosen.

When her car and money are stolen, Elizabeth is stranded atop Stony Ridge, Arkansas, far from her safe, small-town life in Maplekill, New York. She must rely upon the taciturn good will of Delia, a spurned, now widowed, black woman left with a hardscrabble life on land that the good old boys might yank from under her. While starting her life anew as a reporter for a nearby town paper, Elizabeth grieves her loss of Ben. She plunges again and again into doubt and self-criticism, combing through memories that reveal no hint of anything but their love for one another.

When nature unleashes a storm with impartial fury, Delia taps into a greater, if not mysterious realm, foreseeing two lives in danger. Pitted against unforgiving outer and inner landscapes, Elizabeth and Delia join together, bringing out the best in one another, and meeting a future beyond all hopes and dreams.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Such a beautiful story! October 21, 2011

By Zelda Barnard

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Carolyn J. Rose is so gifted at bringing her characters to life. You feel like you know them, hurt with them, cry with them, love with them. I am purchasing a number of copies for Christmas gifts. A PLACE OF FORGETTING will definitely be among my top 10 reads of 2011.

More About the Author

Carolyn J. Rose is the author of several novels, including Hemlock Lake, Through a Yellow Wood, An Uncertain Refuge, Sea of Regret, A Place of Forgetting, No Substitute for Murder, and No Substitute for Money. She also penned a young adult fantasy, Drum Warrior, with her husband, Mike Nettleton.

She grew up in New York's Catskill Mountains, graduated from the University of Arizona, logged two years in Arkansas with Volunteers in Service to America, and spent 25 years as a television news researcher, writer, producer, and assignment editor in Arkansas, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. She founded the Vancouver Writers' Mixers and is an active supporter of her local bookstore, Cover to Cover. Her interests are reading, gardening, and not cooking.