Things You Would Know If You Grew Up ..., Nancy Wayson Dinan
Things You Would Know If You Grew Up ..., Nancy Wayson Dinan
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Things You Would Know If You Grew Up Around Here

Author: Nancy Wayson Dinan

Narrator: Eileen Stevens, Mark Bramhall

Unabridged: 9 hr 59 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/19/2020

Synopsis

Set during the devastating Memorial Day floods in Texas, a surreal, empathetic novel for readers of Station Eleven and The Age of Miracles.2015. Eighteen-year-old Boyd Montgomery returns from her grandfather’s wedding to find her friend Isaac missing. Drought-ravaged central Texas has been newly inundated with rain, and flash floods across the state have begun to sweep away people, cars, and entire houses as every river breaks its banks.In the midst of the rising waters, Boyd sets out across the ravaged back country. She is determined to rescue her missing friend, and she’s not alone in her quest: her neighbor Carla spots Boyd’s boot prints leading away from the safety of home and follows in her path. Hours later, her mother returns to find Boyd missing, and she, too, joins the search.Boyd, Carla, and Lucy Maud know the land well. They’ve lived in central Texas for their entire lives. But they have no way of knowing the fissure the storm has opened along the back roads, no way of knowing what has been erased—and what has resurfaced. As they each travel through the newly unfamiliar landscape, they discover the ghosts of Texas past and present.Haunting and timely, Things You Would Know if You Grew Up Around Here considers questions of history and empathy and brings a pre-apocalyptic landscape both foreign and familiar to shockingly vivid life.

About Nancy Wayson Dinan

Nancy Wayson Dinan is a native Texan who currently lives in San Jose, Costa Rica. The former managing editor of Iron Horse Literary Review, she now teaches at Texas Tech University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Texas Observer, Arts & Letters, Crab Orchard Review, the Cincinnati Review, and others. She earned her MFA from Ohio State University in 2013 and is currently a PhD student in fiction at Texas Tech.

About Eileen Stevens

Eileen Stevens is a voice-over actress whose voice can be heard on cartoons, promos, programs for English-language learners, and audiobooks. An Earphones Award–winning narrator, she is also an audiobook director and producer.

About Mark Bramhall

Mark Bramhall has won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration, more than thirty AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has repeatedly been named by AudioFile magazine and Publishers Weekly among their “Best Voices of the Year.” He is also an award-winning actor whose acting credits include off-Broadway, regional, and many Los Angeles venues as well as television, animation, and feature films. He has taught and directed at the American Academy of Dramatic Art.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Sarah

Thing I Wish I Had Known Before Reading This Book: it's a horror novel. It's a number of other things, too, and has some beautiful, evocative prose, but for anyone who strongly dislikes horror, the fact is that this just feels like a magical realist story for a while and then takes that hard turn la......more

Goodreads review by Kristi Lamont

BOOK REPORT So there I was, being carried along in a half-sort of dream state, very caught up in extreme empathy and the land as character, when suddenly I had to go cope with adult life. That was about halfway through the book. When I came back to it a few hours later, sadly, the spell was broken. Oh......more

Goodreads review by Laurel

HOW AND WHY do you add an adorable baby who is saved from a flooded trailer and lives for like 30 pages right at the end of the book and casts hope onto the end only to have the baby dropped accidentally from a tree and then IT JUST FALLS INTO THE RIVER AND DIES.......more

Goodreads review by Lolly K Dandeneau

via my blog: [URL not allowed] 'The old-timers say it’s not the apocalypse but the leading edge of it.' This novel is set during the Memorial Day Floods in Texas, 2015. It begins in 2003 where we understand Boyd is a special sort of little girl, one who is ‘sensitive’, touched wit......more

Quotes

“This strange brew of a book…is shot through with magical realism and undergirded by a naturalist’s concern for Mother Earth—and it’s all wrapped in lovely sentences. Book groups will have field days discussing this.” Booklist (starred review)

“By turns magical, harshly realistic, poetic, aggravating, and enthralling.” Kirkus Reviews

“Fabulous and engrossing, both faithful to the real-world details of central Texas and wildly imaginative…Dinan’s storytelling flows as forcefully as a flash flood in this spellbinding first novel…An extraordinary novel.” Shelf Awareness

“Proof that the finest American novelist of her generation has taken the stage. Wayson Dinan has created characters so real we can’t help but fall in love with them.” Dennis Covington, author of Salvation on Sand Mountain

“In this myth-like journey, the earth comes alive, the past breaks its bonds, and a girl who understands the deepest griefs of strangers sets out on a desperate search to save a friend.” Adelia Saunders, author of Indelible

“In this astonishing debut novel, dream and dread and hope braid into a single, unforgettable tale. It washes away old boundaries and creates a world that is new, slightly menacing, and thrilling.” Erin McGraw, author of The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard

“Precise and full-hearted, reverently attentive to the natural world, and woven through with subtle magic. Like the cataclysmic storm that sets this book in motion, Wayson Dinan’s stunning debut will carry readers clean away.” Katie Cortese, author of Make Way for Her and Other Stories

“A harrowing descent into a central Texas underworld. Wayson Dinan’s novel will drown you with beauty and grief.” Micah Dean Hicks, author of Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones

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