The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay, Beverly Jensen
The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay, Beverly Jensen
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The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay

Author: Beverly Jensen

Narrator: Bernadette Dunne

Unabridged: 11 hr 40 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/18/2010

Synopsis

In 1916, Sisters Idella and Avis Hillock live on the edge of a chilly bluff in New Brunswick, Canada, a hardscrabble world of potato farms, rough men, hard work, and baffling beauty. From Gone, the heartbreaking account of the crisis that changed their lives forever, to the darkly comic Wake, which follows the grown siblings catastrophic efforts to escort the body of their father Wild Bill Hillock to his funeral, these stories of Idella and Avis offer a compelling and wry vision of two remarkable women. The vivid characters include Idellas philandering husband, her bewilderingly difficult motherinlaw, and Avis, whose serial romantic disasters never quell her irrepressible spirit. Jensens work evokes a time gone by and reads like an instant American classic.

About Beverly Jensen

Beverly Jensen earned an MFA in drama from Southern Methodist University. She died of cancer in 2003 at the age of forty-nine without publishing her work. Since her death, her fiction has been championed by a dedicated group of supporters, including Stephen King and Joyce Carol Oates. After her death, her story “Wake” was published in the New England Review, included in The Best American Short Stories 2007, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is survived by her husband, Jay Silverman, and their two children.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Sandra on July 02, 2010

After reading The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay by Beverly Jensen I felt privileged to have had the opportunity to meet Idella and Avis Hillock. Having been born and raised in New Brunswick, the characters quickly became like old friends known in the distant past. So many young people raised on subs......more

Goodreads review by Irene on August 10, 2010

Initially, I was fully engaged by the occasional melodramatic moments in the “hardscrabble” lives of the Hillock family, especially the mother’s untimely death in childbirth, leaving a distraught and impulsive father with four children. Overwhelmed by thoughts of daily struggles to eke out what littl......more

Goodreads review by Tara on August 31, 2010

This is a thoroughly entertaining book spanning seventy years, following two sisters from their motherless childhood in Canada to Boston to Maine. It skips years and is told somewhat like short stories but about the same people. I like that because it means it's not bogged down with irrelevant detai......more

Goodreads review by Peggy on February 04, 2013

I loved this book. The author passed away before any of her work was published and her husband and friends published her writings. This is a book about Idella and Avis Hillock, who live it Hardscrapple Bay, New Brunswick. When the girls are 8 and 6 their mother dies in childbirth and they get sent t......more

Goodreads review by Janellyn51 on June 11, 2017

This book did a real job on me emotionally. It really really upset me. I loved Idella, and got quite a kick out of Avis Mavis, she was a piece of Work! My great grandfather was from Van Buren Maine, take a right on Main St. Over the bridge, the St. Johns River, and you in New Brunswick..... I'm prett......more

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