Roses [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Leila Meacham (Author), Coleen Marlo (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 23, 2010

Spanning the twentieth century, Roses is the story of the powerful founding families of Howbutker, Texas, and how their histories remain intertwined over the span of three generations.


Cotton tycoon Mary Toliver and timber magnate Percy Warwick fell in love, but because of their stubborn natures and Mary’s devotion to her family’s land, they unwisely never wed. Now they must deal with the deceit, secrets, and tragedies that surround them, and the poignant loss of what might have been—not only for themselves, but also for their family legacies.


With expert and unabashed big-canvas storytelling that reads like a Texas Gone With the Wind, Leila Meacham pens an epic of three intriguing generations. A deeply moving love story of struggle and sacrifice as well, ROSES is steeped with nostalgia for a time when honor and good manners were always the rule.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This enthralling stunner, a good old-fashioned read, may herald the overdue return of those delicious doorstop epics from such writers as Barbara Taylor Bradford and Colleen McCullough. Meacham's multigenerational family saga, set in East Texas circa 1914–1985, charts the transformation of Mary Toliver, a wide-eyed 16-year-old heiress, into a calculating cotton plantation queen as hardheaded as Scarlett O'Hara. Her brother, Miles, goes off to WWI, returns home, but then goes back to France to marry Marietta, a French Communist, leaving Mary to deal with their plantation, Somerset, and Darla, their alcoholic mother (who later hangs herself ). Many years later, Mary, now an elderly, terminally ill widow, resolves to defeat the Toliver Curse and regrets selling her soul for Somerset and giving up her true love, Percy Warwick, the father of their secret child, to marry their friend Ollie DuMont, who helped her save Somerset when Percy refused. Meacham uses three well-balanced viewpoints: Mary's, Percy's and Rachel's, Mary's great-niece, who must confront Percy when she discovers some disquieting family information after Mary dies. A refreshingly nostalgic bouquet of family angst, undying love and if onlys. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the small east Texas town of Howbutker is run by two families. The Tolivers preside over the massive cotton plantation of Somerset, while the Warwicks possess acres upon acres of timber. The children of the families, pretty and stubborn Mary Toliver and suave, strong Percy Warwick, are like water and oil. Percy insists that Mary will eventually marry him, and Mary is adamant that she will never have room in her heart for anything but Somerset, yet their undeniable attraction pulls them together. Through a trick of fate, Percy and Mary are forced apart. The consequences of their separation vibrate throughout the years, giving rise to lies, deceit, secrets, and tragedies that their families must suffer through, until, ultimately, they just have to leave it to Percy, Mary, and plain fate to see if they can make things right in the end. First-time novelist Meacham’s sweeping, century-encompassing, multigenerational epic is reminiscent of the film Giant, and as large, romantic, and American a tale as Texas itself. --Hilary Hatton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Random House Audio; Unabridged edition (February 23, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307750833
• ISBN-13: 978-0307750839
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 1.6 x 5.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (152 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,138,770 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Leila Meacham writes of East Texas with authority. She has lived in Texas all of her life with the exceptions short sojourns out of state with her Air Force husband and her birth in Minden, Louisiana, because her father could not get her mother across the border of the Sabine River into Texas for her to be born. She says that as far as she knows, it's the only regret he ever had of his daughter.

Leila graduated from North Texas State University with a Bachelor's Degree of Arts. She married a pilot in the US Air Force during the war years of Viet Nam and served in numerous capacities of volunteer work as a military wife before resuming her teaching career in San Antonio. She taught high school English until her retirement from that profession, developing the gifted and talented program still used in the tenth grade curriculum of Converse Judson. She was twice elected by her peers as Teacher of the Year.

She came to her love of writing late, she says, even though she dabbled briefly into the process when she wrote a romance novel in the mid-eighties that she never expected to be published. It was followed by two others because she was under contract, but the experience and genre left her with a desire never to pick up a pen again.

"That changed when I ran out of things to do after retirement," she says, "and one day I sat down and wrote ROSES."

Leila has no children and has been married to her husband for forty-three years.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

138 of 143 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Love Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry, Except With Roses, November 18, 2009

By 

K. Harris "Film aficionado" (Albuquerque, NM) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Roses (Hardcover)

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Spanning three generations and nearly a century, Leila Meacham's "Roses" is a throwback to epic storytelling in the vein of Edna Ferber, Margaret Mitchell, or Colleen McCullough. The book advertising, itself, makes the comparison to "The Thorn Birds" and those are pretty lofty expectations to set as McCollough's "The Thorn Birds" has endured as one of the most beloved romance sagas of its day. In truth, I don't think "Roses" is the next classic in that vein--but I do believe there is a lot to recommend this sprawling tale of forbidden love and family betrayal.

In a small East Texas town, three families of enormous wealth and power come to reside. The Tolivers are cotton tycoons, the Warwicks are lumber barons, and the DuMonts are retail magnates. The mutual respect formed between these elite families set up a social structure that will have long lasting repercussions through the generations for all their progeny. At the heart of "Roses" is Mary Toliver, a heroine we follow for 80 plus years. Stubborn and single-minded, Mary is a terrific and maddening character--epitomizing the strong-willed matriarch necessary for just such a tale. Her male counterpoint is Percy Warwick, a perfect foil and the love of Mary's life. Of course, these two are made for each other--and of course, they can never truly realize happiness in each other's arms. Their grand romance is played through the decades with enormous vigor, and their dance together is filled with small moments of joy but mostly great tragedy.

The first two-thirds of Meacham's tale is terrifically engaging. Fast paced and fun, I was whole-heartedly invested in the Mary and Percy story and all the subplots in the periphery. Galloping through the years, the ill-fated romance stays center stage even as both parties move off into new directions. I enjoyed the characters and even as they created a new generation, that still remained a part of the main story line. However, all good things must come to an end--and ultimately, for me, the book loses momentum for its final third. Concerning itself with Mary's potential heir, Rachel Toliver (the third generation and Mary's double in both spirit and dedication to the family business to the exclusion of everything else), the story lacks some of the pizzazz that it had previously showcased. Still a solid conclusion, it just didn't captivate me in the way Mary's story had--so there was a bit of a fizzle instead of a crescendo.

I really recommend "Roses" to fans of the genre. Ultimately, I'm probably not the book's intended audience but I like to dabble in soapy sagas every once in a while. And, I found most of "Roses" to be entertaining and involving. I genuinely cared for the characters of Mary and Percy, and if you're going to follow a family saga through the decades--that's got to be a positive!

71 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An intriguing plot, but..., November 8, 2009

By 

Kokopelli (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Roses (Hardcover)

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I am torn over where to begin with this review. The author had the makings of a great book here with a promising plot line and what could have been great characters. Unfortunately, especially in the first half of the book involving Mary and Percy, the characterizations are uneven and undeveloped, and the motivations and actions don't make sense. The second half of the book, involving Mary's granddaughter Rachel, is somewhat better in these regards, or maybe I just got used to the author's writing and filled in the blanks for myself. I was astounded to read that Ms. Meacham was a former English teacher, as her use of similes and metaphors is strained and off-putting, and her failure to correctly provide an antecedent for her many pronouns is rampant. Further, some of her sudden leaps in place and time can be pretty confusing, as they are indicated by nothing at all other than all of a sudden someone else is speaking or the action is taking place somewhere unrelated to what came immediately before. Maybe these missteps were present because I was reading an ARC, and they will be corrected in the final version of the book. I can only hope so, both for Ms. Meacham's sake and the sake of her future readers. A good editor would have been a godsend for this version that I received.

All that said, I was held by the storyline and the suspense until the last page, and I was never tempted to put the book down and not finish it. I think Ms. Meacham does capture the ambiance of small-town Texas (I grew up in a small town in West Texas myself) and it's entirely believable that there were two or three "ruling" families with immense wealth and property and also great respect from the town. She reveals the secrets of these families in a convincing manner and maintains plenty of suspense along the way. My earlier comments about characterization refer primarily to the fact that the actions of the characters are not sufficiently explained by what we've come to know and understand about them. For example, Mary's willingness to accept the vagaries of fate and not fight for true love does not square with her stubbornness about holding on to Somerset regardless of the consequences. Also, Mary's realistic and straightforward approach to the farm and life in general doesn't lend much credence to her devastating actions taken because of belief in a family curse. Of course, people are complicated and do have blind spots, but somehow the most critical step Mary takes is never justified at all by anything we've come to know about her. And Rachel's final decision regarding her law suit is never explained at all. I've tried to avoid any spoilers in the preceding but I felt that I needed to justify my own statements by giving a few examples.

I also think some family genealogy charts would have been helpful to remember who's in what generation and their relation to the rest of the family.

I hope the final published version of this book will have taken care of all my misgivings, and with that in mind, I recommend this book to anyone who likes a multi-generational tale of passion, suspense, and tragedy.

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Could not put this book down!, December 20, 2009

By 

M. D. Mulhern (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Roses (Hardcover)

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I thoroughly enjoyed this book! I started it one snowy evening and had to stay up and finish. I was totally enthralled with Mary's life and what had happened to lead up to the opening moments in the first chapter. The book sets the stage for flashbacks and the is divided into three parts: Mary's Story, another main character's story (no spoilers from me!) and then the present when everything wraps up. Even though I knew how Mary's life had ended up, I was so captivated by her and the other characters that I kept hoping that she would make different decisions, change her life, etc. This book was a wonderful guilty pleasure....kind of like 'The Thorn Birds" lite.

I did think that the third section dragged a bit. Maybe because I was so wrapped up in the past and Mary's life, I did not care as much about her great-niece Rachel, or maybe I was just tired. But things started to seem a bit redundant, especially the symbolism of the red and white roses.

But all in all, I HIGHLY recommend this book!