Ruby & Roland

Praise for Ruby & Roland

"A vivid world . . . As the old saying goes, 'The heart wants what the heart wants.' And as you read Sullivan's tender novel, you sense it all around you." Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Sullivan's writing is charming, and she has created a refreshing, unconventional love story." Chicago Review of Books

"Fans of Jane Eyre will adore the intelligent, brazen Ruby whose combination of pragmatism and besottedness is winningly sympathetic. Replete with agrarian nostalgia and crisp prose, Sullivan's quiet tale is a wonderful, arresting meditation on sacrifice." Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Unforgettable . . . The path [Ruby] chooses is unpredictable, unconventional, and fiercely her own. Fans of Sullivan's Harvester novels and resilient female characters will find much to love here." Booklist

"Sullivan creates a story worthy of comparison to Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome. Recommended for historical and women's fiction fans." Library Journal

"Rapturous . . . The joyful sense of community within this love story offers a charming and refreshing escape from the modern world." Kirkus

Strong women, great sex scenes, and beautiful writing. Welcome back to Harvester, Minnesota! I love this book.Julie Schumacher, author of Dear Committee Members

It is a joy to return to Harvester and the beloved characters of Faith Sullivan. Once again, Sullivan takes readers on a journey to the Midwest that is a love song to the earth, the power of community, and the importance of literature in expanding one's horizons. Ruby and Roland share a forbidden love that alters the course of their destiny, as well as the fate of the members of their ad-hoc family. Bound by the love of the land and their love of each other, Ruby and Roland's story makes the reader 'live on hope.' What a beautiful tale for our times.Pamela Klinger-Horn, Excelsior Bay Books

**Praise for Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse

Top Ten Book of 2015 in the Wall Street Journal, and winner of the Midwest Book Award and the Langum Prize for Historical Fiction**

Sullivan's novels are a reliably inviting world, full of friendly faces and intimate dramas. . . . However you first make your way to Harvester, you'll want to return.Wall Street Journal

For all those fans of The Cape Ann, Gardenias, and The Empress of One: here is your priceless ticket back to Harvester, Minnesota. An extraordinary book.Julie Schumacher, author of Dear Committee Members

Sullivan's canvas may be small, but her message is universal: booksincluding this onehave the power to amuse, console and transform lives.Shelf Awareness

Sullivan describes small-town life through the eyes of an intelligent, generous narrator who fights off gossip, pettiness and tragedy with compassion, perseverance and forgiveness. Who wouldn't want to spend a late-summer afternoon or two in the company of such a person?Minneapolis Star Tribune

Reading Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse, I was reminded of the extraordinary novels of the late, great William Maxwell. Here too are large passions, sweeping love affairs, and deep friendships. A beautiful and profound novel.Margot Livesey, author of Mercury

More than 40 years of history bookend a lifelong love affair with reading for the resilient heroine of Sullivan's latest novel set in Harvester, Minnesota. Nell's life experiences read like her book collectionsome are part of a series, some stand alone, and all are ultimately comforting and timeless.Kirkus

Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse is told with Faith Sullivan's trademark warmth, wit and wisdom. Readers, prepare to be captivated.Lorna Landvik, author of Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons

Vorwort
Advertising and promotional collaboration with Midwest Booksellers Alliance, including in their Winter Catalog Advertising in Shelf Awareness to announce the paperback release Mailing campaign to bookstores that missed sales in hardcover but have sold previous Sullivan titles well Edelweiss blurb campaign to booksellers with focus on MIBA and GLIBA-affiliated stores Reader's guide available via download for book clubs, stores, media, and libraries

Autorentext
Faith Sullivan is the author of many novels, including Gardenias, The Cape Ann, What a Woman Must Do, Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse, and, most recently,. A demon gardener, flea marketer, and feeder of birds, she is also an indefatigable champion of literary culture and her fellow writers, and has visited with hundreds of book clubs. Born and raised in southern Minnesota, she spent twenty-some years in New York and Los Angeles, but now lives in Minneapolis with her husband.

Klappentext

"However you first make your way to Harvester, you'll want to return." -WALL STREET JOURNAL

Zusammenfassung
From the author of Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse and The Cape Ann comes a new tale of resilient womanhood in Harvester, Minnesota.

Growing up in early twentieth-century Illinois, Ruby Drake is a happy child. But one winter's night, her beloved parents perish in an accidentand suddenly Ruby finds herself penniless and nearly alone in the world. Her new path eventually takes her to Harvester, where she is lucky enough to find work on the welcoming Schoonover farm. Kind Emma, forward-thinking Henry, and their hired menambitious Dennis and reserved Jakesoon become a second family to the orphaned teenager.

At a historical moment when young women are expected to be focused on courtship and marriage, the industrious, bright Ruby searches for opportunities to expand her horizons at every step. Mastering her responsibilities on the farm. Learning to smoke cigarettes. Borrowing books from the local lending library, reading devotedly and expansively: mythology, romance, poetry. And falling in love with her married neighbor, Roland: the most beautiful manmaybe in the world. But when Ruby is asked to care for Roland's wife in the wake of tragedy, she is torn between duty and passion, between what has been her lot and what could be.

Jane Eyre set in Faith Sullivan's reliably inviting world (Wall Street Journal), Ruby & Roland is a story of relationshipsfriendship, romance, and the families we are born with and createand of one woman's journey of selfhood on the prairie.

Leseprobe
Chapter Three

Around five o'clock, the train pulled into a station so like the one in Salisbury, I would have thought we'd traveled in a circle had Harvester not been printed on the side of the gray building.

On the platform, a lone woman stood waiting. The brim of her straw hat fluttered in the prairie wind. Drawing the sleeve of her dress across her brow, she wiped away perspiration. Advancing, she greeted me. She was Emma Schoonover, she said, and I was to call her Emma. She had not expected a pretty girl, she went on. Was I pretty?

From the tone of Emma Schoonover's words, pretty was something she had not bargained for nor desired. She quickly bethought herself, however, and cast me a flickering smile. She was brusque without being cold. I believe harried is the word I want. September was after all an extremely busy time on a farm. This I knew from living in two farm towns before coming here.

As we waited for my small trunk to be lowered from the train and carried by the depot clerk to the woman's buggy, I glanced sidelong, trying not to gawk. Emma was perhaps forty and comely without being beautiful, or so I thought at the time. Possibly farm life had robbed her of earlier beauty.

Up since four a.m. she explained, as if I'd inquired. Big breakfast for the threshers. Eggs, steak, homemade bread and gravy, pies, egg coffee.

Her spine as straight as a ruler, Emma held the reins loosely but with authority. As we rode out of tow…