From Publishers Weekly
Toby Jenkins, now 72, has been living all her life in the same ornate Sears, Roebuck farmhouse in the Nebraska Sandhills her father bought for her mother back in 1920. For now, Toby aims to stay there with her cranky self-righteous sister, Gertie, despite the local weasel banker's pressure to sell. Toby is widowed, resolute and land-scarred; a string of family deaths, tragedies and abandonments have left Toby and Gertie with no one to pass the place on to. Then Toby's 16-year-old pregnant granddaughter, Lila, arrives from Minneapolis. At first the unloved, metal-studded Lila, the child of Toby's adoptive daughter, a bitter airline stewardess, is surly and ungrateful, but eventually her curiosity about country rituals and her grandmother's life leads her to the family cemetery and to archives harboring long-buried family secrets. Playwright Joern's characters are as stern as the land, and the world of her debut novel is sturdy and memorable.
(Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Joern intricately weaves together a compelling family saga and a beautifully rendered paean to the land her characters love and are struggling to preserve. Rooted in the Nebraska Sandhills, Toby, an aging widow, lives with her older sister in the house their parents built before the Depression. Toby invites Lila, her pregnant 16-year-old granddaughter, to stay with them until her baby is born, in part to assuage the long-standing rift between Toby and Lila's mother. While sifting through her feelings about her pregnancy, impending motherhood, and adoption, Lila simultaneously begins digging into family secrets, including the death of Toby's first love in an accident caused by her father and the son Toby gave up for adoption months later. Surrounding the intertwined details of this family's loves, jealousies, and regrets like a cocoon is their emotional bond with the land itself--the land they're in danger of losing to a ranching conglomerate. Joern's lyrical and painterly descriptions of the vast Sandhills are the perfect backdrop for this subtle drama.
Deborah DonovanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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