Diane Hammond

Having devotedly cared for a lone elephant at a dilapidated zoo for more than forty years, Samson hopes to be able to retire when he hires promising assistant Neva, who forces Samson to acknowledge that the elephant also needs the company of her own kind. Original. 50,000 first printing.

A Novel

Hannah's Dream

Diane Hammond’s beautifully rendered description of life in the fictional small town of Hubbard, Oregon, won her plaudits for Going to Bend, her debut novel. In Homesick Creek, Hammond returns to Hubbard and captivates us once again with a cast of characters so vivid we feel like we’ve known them all our lives. Anita and Bunny have been friends since high school, when Anita was a beauty queen runner-up and Bunny a sweet single mother with average looks. They were both taken by surprise when the handsome, charismatic Hack Neary chose Bunny to be his wife. A natural-born salesman, Hack now works his charms at the local car dealership, and he and Bunny enjoy a very comfortable life. But after sixteen years of excusing Hack’s white lies, Bunny is more shaken than she’d like to be by his dangerous new flirtation and her rising suspicions that Hack never meant to put down roots in Hubbard. Anita has also married, but unlike Hack and Bunny, she and her husband are barely scraping by. Bob isn’t ambitious enough to properly support his wife and daughter. He is, however, constant in his love: for Anita, still beautiful in his eyes despite the toll of age, work, and poverty; for his daughter and granddaughter, who need more than the couple can provide; and for Warren, his best friend since they were poor and unwanted children in the same trailer park. Facing a future that seems increasingly difficult, the friends turn to one another and find reserves of love and strength that help heal the wounds they inadvertently inflict on each other. At the deepest point of her grief, Bunny realizes, “If you loved somebody once, no matter how long ago, that had to be worth something.”

Homesick Creek

An elephant never forgets... This is the story of Hannah the elephant and her soon-to-be-retired keeper, Samson Brown. For forty-one years Hannah has been held in captivity at a dilapidated zoo, with Sam's company the one thing keeping her going. Sam's terrified what will happen to Hannah when he's gone, so rejoices when elephant expert Neva Wilson arrives on the scene. But can she dream? Neva quickly discovers what Sam already knows: that despite their loving care, Hannah's isolation and worsening health could be her undoing. So together they hatch a plan, to send Hannah to an elephant sanctuary - just as the zoo's spiteful director launches a campaign that spotlights Hannah as the main attraction, intricately tying Hannah's future to the fate of the zoo.

“Diane Hammond writes with heart, compassion, and humor.” —Terry Gamble, author of The Water Dancers From Diane Hammond, author of Hannah’s Dream, comes Seeing Stars, a glorious new novel of hope, dreams, love, and ambition. Set in Hollywood—where every child wants to be a star and every grownup wants a piece of the action—Seeing Stars explores a not-so glamorous world of stage mothers, adolescent Tinsel Town wannabes, and desperate chances with warmth and wit.

Seeing Stars

In the small coastal town of Hubbard, Oregon, your man may let you down, your boss may let you down, life may let you down . . . but your best friend never will. Welcome to Hubbard, where Petie Coolbaugh and Rose Bundy have been best friends since childhood. Now in their early thirties, both are grappling to come to terms with their age and station in life. As they struggle to make ends meet and provide for their children and the good-hearted but unreliable men in their lives, they take jobs cooking for a brand-new upscale restaurant, Souperior's Cafe, starting from scratch every morning to produce gallons of fresh soup from local recipes. The proprietors of the cafe, Nadine and Gordon, are fraternal twins from Los Angeles with adjustments of their own to make, but Rose’s warmth and the quality of the women’s soups quickly make them indispensable despite Petie’s abrupt manner and prickly ways. The strains of daily life are never far, however, and the past takes its toll on the women. Petie’s childhood as the daughter of the town drunk—a subject she won't talk about—keeps her at a distance from even her best friend, until an unexpected romance threatens to crack her tough exterior. And despite Rose's loving personality, the only man in her life is a loner fisherman who spends only a few months of the year in town. In this fishing village, friends are for life and love comes in the most unexpected ways. As the novel draws together lovers, husbands, employers, friends, and family, each woman finds possibilities for love and even grace that she had never imagined.

Diane Hammond

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