Between Sisters [Audio Cassette]

Nina Vida (Author), Tia Carrere (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1995

From the author of last year's critically acclaimed Goodbye, Saigon comes a bold a deeply affecting novel about a woman changing, surviving, and fighting for a family she never knew she had. "This is a book to be treasured . . . both for its immediate pleasures and for helping us remember where we've been."--New York Times Book Review. Simultaneous hardcover release from Crown Publishers. 2 cassettes.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With powerful prose, Vida (Goodbye, Saigon) charts the legacy of abuse perpetrated by a truly monstrous man against his wife and two daughters. In the book's first section, set in Southern California in 1965, eight-year-old Lela, the central character, endures numerous horrors. First her older sister, 18-year-old Jolene, puts an end to their vicious, deranged father's ongoing sexual molestation by having him arrested. Since her mother is incompetent, Lela spends time at a nightmarish foster-care facility before she is returned home. While out on bail, her father kills Lela's mother, kidnaps her and molests her before the authorities track him down. Though protective Jolene attempts to become Lela's legal guardian, Lela is instead adopted by a loving family and separated from her sister. In the book's second section, set in 1993, Lela is a high-end real estate agent-and she's forgotten Jolene, having repressed all memory of the first eight years of her life. In an improbable plot turn, a man named Ross MacGowan shows up and convinces her to travel with him to Northern California to offer unspecified help to a woman he says is her sister. Once there, Ross kidnaps Jolene's neglected young daughter, Sandy (whom he fathered), because Jolene is a junkie. Ross then leaves Sandy in Lela's care. Ultimately, the sisters confront each other and their shared past face-to-face. Though the plot is a bit high-strung and sometimes less than credible, Vida holds it together with solid dialogue and an ending that offers realistic hope for the two scarred sisters.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Vida (Goodbye Saigon, LJ 8/94) has written a made-for-TV novel that provides readers with the graphic details of a father's sexual abuse of his two daughters and the psychological abuse and eventual murder of his wife. The main character, the younger daughter, Lela, spends her first eight years witnessing her father rape her sister, then watches her father murder her mother; she is herself raped by her father and is then placed in an adoptive family by the courts. In her teens, Lela sees a psychiatrist who seduces her, and, later on, her adoptive parents are killed in an airplane crash. Lela, despite her torturous past, is a loving and generous person. As an adult, various incidents cause her to remember the childhood that her adoptive family and seducer-psychiatrist encouraged her to forget. Rather than being defeated by this confrontation with her history, she finds new meaning in life. Suitable for larger public libraries.?Rebecca Stuhr-Rommereim, Grinnell Coll. Libs., Ia.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Dove Entertainment Inc (December 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787106585
• ISBN-13: 978-0787106584
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,805,482 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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