Elizabeth Wetmore

Written with the haunting emotional power of Elizabeth Strout and Barbara Kingsolver, an astonishing debut novel that explores the lingering effects of a brutal crime on the women of one small Texas oil town in the 1970s. Mercy is hard in a place like this . . . It's February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom. While the town's men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems to follow. In the early hours of the morning after Valentine's Day, fourteen-year-old Gloria Ramírez appears on the front porch of Mary Rose Whitehead's ranch house, broken and barely alive. The teenager had been viciously attacked in a nearby oil field--an act of brutality that is tried in the churches and barrooms of Odessa before it can reach a court of law. When justice is evasive, one of the town's women decides to take matters into her own hands, setting the stage for a showdown with potentially devastating consequences. Valentine is a haunting exploration of the intersections of violence and race, class and region in a story that plumbs the depths of darkness and fear, yet offers a window into beauty and hope. Told through the alternating points of view of indelible characters who burrow deep in the reader's heart, this fierce, unflinching, darkly funny, and surprisingly tender novel illuminates women's strength and vulnerability, and reminds us that it is the stories we tell ourselves that keep us alive.

Valentine

En un pueblo a trescientos kilómetros de cualquier lugar, los destinos de un puñado de personajes se entrelazan en una narración magistral de odio y miedo, pero también de amor y de esperanza. Es el día de San Valentín del año 1976 y el pueblo de Odessa, Texas, está en la cúspide de un boom petrolero. En medio del campo petrolífero, pocos minutos antes del amanecer, Glory Ramírez, de catorce años, logra sacar fuerzas para escapar de su agresor. Atraviesa el campo entre alambres de púas, restos de tuberías rotas y matojos de mezquite hasta llegar a la puerta de Mary Rose Whitehead, cuya vida se ve irremediablemente trastocada no sólo por la crueldad de la que ha sido víctima la niña –bien podría ser su hija– sino por los hechos subsecuentes, que se suman a los relatos de violencia e injusticia cotidianas que por generaciones han sufrido las mujeres de su pueblo. Más allá de describir el contexto histórico de un pueblo sureño, Elizabeth Wetmore nos ofrece un potente debut literario que explora los límites del ser humano. Una novela coral extraordinariamente escrita que nos lleva por las entrañas de las mujeres que la protagonizan. Nacida y criada en West Texas, Elizabeth Wetmore vive con su esposo y su hijo en Chicago. Amor y furia es su primera novela.

Valentine \ Amor y furia (Spanish edition)

Jennifer Fickley-Baker

Lynn Bemiller

Features bestselling author Elizabeth Wetmore, Valentine and "Jesse Belden." These stories that will last with you long after you close the page. In "Jesse Belden," bestselling author Elizabeth Wetmore expands on the world of Valentine with the story of a Vietnam war veteran living in a drainpipe and forming a unique bond with a headstrong young girl. Like all great literary characters, there's much more to Jesse's story. Alyce Werdel transports readers back to East Berlin in 1989 in "The Night the Wall Came Crumbling Down," the prologue from her forthcoming novel, Vengeance. In "The Box," author Lynn Bemiller takes readers into the life of Kristin Winkler, a young scientist who's determined to solve the mystery of why her coworkers keep disappearing-and what the lab's disappearing collection of samples may have to do with it. These are just a handful of the amazing characters and stories readers will find in Ground. Dig into Ground and discover your new favorite writers! Contributors: Lynn Bemiller, Nell Porter Brown, Kate M. Colby, Elizabeth Coleman, Victoria Ferenbach, Jennifer Fickley-Baker, Andrew Hinshaw, Jeannie Hua, Andrew C. Peterson, J.L. Price, Alyce Werdel and Elizabeth Wetmore. Edited by Seth Harwood. Learn more at www.GroundFiction.com.

Elizabeth Wetmore

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