Customer Reviews

The Curing Season

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Leslie Wells' debut novel, "The Curing Season," may be one of the most upsetting and important books you will ever read. Brilliantly conceived, this harrowing novel flays the reader's sensibilities as it unblinkingly reveals the hellish and horrific nature of domestic abuse in grim, evocative and devastating detail. Embedded in this vital book are lessons on endurance, wrenching avowals of the depth of love a mother has for a child and stirring portraits of heroic risks friends quietly, but unhesitatingly, take for each other. Written with feminist sensitivity and a sense of outrage against violence against women, "The Curing Season" will surely be recognized as a classic in its genre, favorably compared with Dorothy Allison's "Bastard out of Carolina."

Haunting contemporary questions permeate the novel, set in rural Virginia some fifty years ago. Where can abused and battered women turn when "the right to hit your woman is sacred...right up there with the liberty to clobber your kids"? How can an individual woman, beaten into submission and gradually losing hope, solve an equation where shame, fear and remorse equal degradation? Under what circumstances can one woman, watching her life crumble away and her personality dissolve, gain the strength of reclaim her identity?

One of the truly noble qualities of "The Curing Season" is its introduction of its protagonist, Cora Slaughter Melville, one of the more remarkable characters in recent American literature. Wells invests Cora with extraordinary resolve and indominable dignity, attributes upon which she must call to overcome circumstances which would conmpel others to consideration of suicide. Born into rural poverty, afflicted physically with a clubfoot and spiritually with an abusive alcoholic father, Cora Slaughter has learned both to accept her life's circumstances and to identify with the sufferings of others. This empathy encompasses all beings who have unfairly suffered or who are marginalized by a society reeking with prejudice and ignorance. She forgives her mother's passivity and receives solace from her wise and strong older sister, Sibby.

"The Curing Season" dissects the cycle of domestic violence through the events which befall Cora. Her physical deformity, a clubfoot "like a glutted sluggish earthworm curled in upon itself," becomes a terrifying metaphor for the stunted, blasted life opening up before her during her late teen years. A drifter's overtures appear heaven-sent, truly miraculous. Cora's eventual debasement shimmers in intensity between physical and psychological ruin.

In her review of the novel, Nikki Giovanni tells readers that "The Curing Season" reminds us about the necessity of standing up to evil. It is this lesson that Leslie Wells enshrines in her novel. Cora Slaughter's condition -- a beaten, devastated woman -- is all the more hurtful because it did not occur in a vacuum. The evil of domestic violence was accepted and ritualized by too many men in her time; her victimization did not elicit outcries of conscience on her behalf. It was on the shoulders of Cora Slaughter, alone, on which the weight of evil rested. Leslie Wells' desperately moving novel implores all of us to gain the vision, dignity and courage to denounce social evil and eliminate it from our midst.

The Curing Season is a marvelous first novel and an extraordinarily engrossing and moving read! Cora Slaughter grows up on a tobacco farm in Southern Virginia in the 1940's in a abusive environment. She dreams that one day a man will come along to take her away, but when Aaron finally does, her new situation is even more trying than the life she is fleeing. The depiction of tobacco farming and the Southern conversations were written quite well and the decriptions of the abuse were so real and heart wrenching. It is a great book about a woman rising from the depths of despair and shows the restorative power of love.

Because I am from the south; I found this book to be very interesting. I enjoyed this book, and I have recommended it to friends and family. The story of the abuse and degradation this woman endured from her "husband" was so real. I was glad to see her step up to the plate and felt the ending was as it should have been. Anyone out there that enjoys true southern fiction will find this story to be very good.

You have to read this. I read this book years ago. It's been one of those books that I've not been able to put out of my head. I identify with the hard farm life because of the stories of my parents and grandparents growing up in the rural South. But it's Cora, the trauma she suffers and her invincible spirit that touched me when I read it. At the time I read it, I would have given it four stars. But after all this time, I continued think back to different scenes in this book and they still touched me, so I decided to read it again, and it's definitely on my five star list. She develops the characters to the point you feel like you know them (and I think they may be a based on a few of my relatives! ha) I don't know why this book didn't get a bigger following and better reviews, because it's that good. I know there were men like her husband in many marriages in that time period. And many women stayed despite the abuse, long after they should have left. But their choices were limited, and many felt they had to. It's one of those books I couldn't put down, and it will still reasonate with you long after you put it down. If you liked this one, try Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith, not as dark, but very similar to this one, only through a child's eyes. I also liked Cold Rock River and Roseflower Creek, both by Jackie Miles, and in the same type setting at these.

The Curing Season

This book is so thought-provoking and unsettling that you feel the hurt and grief right through the pages. I couldn't keep reading it and I couldn't put it down, all at the same time.

I highly recommend this book and encourage you to be brave when you pick it up. It will challenge you, uplift you and change you.

This is an incredible debut novel. It chronicles the childhood abuse of Cora and later the abuse she suffers at the hands of her commonlaw husband Aaron. The descriptions of the abuse and Cora's feelings about it were vivid and heartbreaking.

It's so easy to criticize women for staying in abusive relationships, but through Cora, Ms. Wells explains why it is so difficult for women to leave and what may finally cause a woman to make the break.

I started out with high expectations for this book, but after so many terrible things happened, it was just too much. I feel the book really lost credibility with the "hog's head" bit. Using the complete head of the hog for food was (and still is)normal -- any poor rural person would understand this -- the author apparently never heard of headcheese or jowl. The ending was just too trite. The book seemed to be a poorly written narrative about domestic violence without understanding the motivesof the characters.