Carley's Song [Paperback]

Patricia Houck Sprinkle (Author)

Book Description

Series: Book 2 of the Job's Corner Chronicles | Publication Date: October 1, 2001

The second of the Job's Corner Chronicles is narrated once again by Carley Marshall, now twelve years old and trying to understand grownups and love in a world swept into the confusion of the Korean War.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sprinkle follows up The Remember Box with this absorbing continuation of the life of an adolescent girl in North Carolina in the 1950s. Job's Corner has become home for orphaned 12-year-old Carley Marshall, poised on the brink of adulthood and wrestling with new feelings and desires. Carley longs for approval from her teacher, the beautiful divorc‚e Maddie Raeburn, and lavishes her romantic dreams on Clay Lamont, the red-headed choir director at Bethel Presbyterian Church. Like all small towns, Job's Corner has dark secrets lurking just underneath the surface: rape, an illicit love affair, wife abuse, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy and murder. But as Carley's uncle, the Rev. Stephen Whitfield, says, "Snow is a lot like grace both cover a heap of dirt and make everything more beautiful." Sprinkle is adept at crafting memorable settings that feel historically authentic, and she portrays Carley's first crush on an unobtainable older man in sweet, nostalgic ways. Indeed, the best parts of the book focus on Carley's innocent experimentation with the trappings of adulthood. There are some problematic areas: the dialect of a five-year-old character is grating, and Sprinkle might better have focused on one or two crises rather than throwing in every disaster imaginable, several of them predictable (we can see one character's rape and the school fire coming a mile away). But the writing itself is superb, the murder is resolved in a surprising way and there's plenty of redemption and hope laced throughout to please Christian fiction buffs.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From the Back Cover

In this exciting sequel to The Remember Box, a young girl uncovers more and more secrets in every corner of her town

Readers of The Remember Box fell in love with the Southern warmth and drama of life in Job’s Corner. Now, in Carley’s Song, the second of the Job’s Corner Chronicles, young Carley Marshall is back and trying to understand grownups and love in a world swept into the confusion of the Korean War.

In the fall of 1950 when Carley is 12, three natives return to Job’s Corner after long absences. Clay Lamont, fresh from the Air Force, breaks Carley’s heart in her first crush. Maddie Raeburn, beautiful enough to be a movie star, causes quite a stir when she announces she is now divorced and plans to teach seventh grade. And Jerry Donaldson returns to become the school principal, igniting an old grudge in Maddie Raeburn.

Meanwhile, Carley stumbles her way into one secret after another and even comes across an old skull. She begins to wonder what other secrets are hiding in Job’s Corner. Will her friends ever find true love? And will she ever come to understand the secretive and often conflicting world of grownups?

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan Publishing Company (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310229936
• ISBN-13: 978-0310229933
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,888,481 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Carley's Song, January 17, 2002

By 

Kirsta (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Carley's Song (Paperback)

I really enjoyed reading Carley's Song because Patricia Sprinkle did a great job of explaining how Carley felt throughout her experiences. I had already read The Remember Box, the first book in the series, and it was a really good book, so I knew I had to read Carley's Song. But I really disliked the character Freda and how she used Carley all the time, and how Carley just went along with it. I really liked her little cousin Abby though, but it seemed as if she always cheered everyone around her up. The book all-in-all was great.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Carley, April 3, 2002

By 

Sarah Boyd (Chattanooga, TN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Carley's Song (Paperback)

This is the sequel to The Remember Box and was very good. As I said about The Remember Box, it is a different writing style than most I have read, but very good. It reminded me somewhat of The Mitford Series by Jan Karon, which I loved!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars carley's song, August 3, 2002

By 

Mary (U S A) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Carley's Song (Paperback)

What a wonderful story. I loved Carley and her delightful cousin Abby who didn't have any predjuice but only saw good in everyone. Cantankerous Mrs. Cameron was really a good person and I cried when she died. Wonderful characters, great story, a great read. Mary