Best Selling Books by Kaye Gibbons

A “vivid, unsentimental, powerful” portrait of a Southern marriage by the New York Times–bestselling author of Ellen Foster (Publishers Weekly). “She hasn’t been dead four months and I’ve already eaten to the bottom of the deep freeze. I even ate the green peas. Used to I wouldn’t turn my hand over for green peas . . .” Ruby Stokes has died too young and left her husband, Blinking Jack, behind. With alternating entries from each of them, A Virtuous Woman recounts the tale of their years together in an “exquisitely realised piece of writing” (Elizabeth Buchan, The Mail on Sunday). From their very different backgrounds—Ruby a daughter of wealth, Jack a penniless tenant farmer—to their relationships with their landlord and his family, and the strength they drew from each other in the face of hardship, this story of a marriage is “full of fantastically gritty metaphors . . . A book that will change your dreams” (The Observer). “Gibbons again flawlessly reproduces the humor and idiom of rural eastern North Carolina.” —Library Journal

"Filled with lively humor, compassion, and intimacy." —Alice Hoffman, The New York Times Book Review "When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy." With that opening sentence we enter the childhood world of one of the most appealing young heroines in contemporary fiction. Her courage, her humor, and her wisdom are unforgettable as she tells her own story with stunning honesty and insight. An Oprah Book Club selection, this powerful novel has become an American classic. Winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters'' Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and the Ernest Hemingway Foundation''s Citation for Fiction.

Generations of Southern women deal with hard times and heartless men in this “joyous” novel by the New York Times–bestselling author of Ellen Foster (The Washington Post Book World). In “a witty and explosive story about men and women, bad girls and good girls, love and laundry,” Kaye Gibbons paints a portrait of shrewd, resourceful women prevailing through hardships and finding unexpected pleasures along the way: gossip, gambling, and the quiet satisfaction of knowing more than they’re supposed to (The Houston Post). In A Cure for Dreams, the acclaimed author “once again demonstrates her extraordinary talent . . . Utterly engaging and convincing” (The Boston Globe). “This episodic novel, Gibbons’s third, is set during the Depression in back-country Virginia and Kentucky. In 19 vignettes, Betty Davies Randolph reveals her childhood and her mother’s life along Milk Farm Road. Gibbons, winner of several literary awards for her first novel Ellen Foster, has captured magnificently the dailiness and sense of community of rural life—from midwives and WPA ballads to suicides and men gone wild. Southern, and full of the folk wisdom of generations, Gibbons’s voice reveals life’s truths.” —Library Journal “Years from now, [these] women’s clear, strong words will still be resonating in my mind.” —Anne Tyler, Chicago Tribune “What a good ear Kaye Gibbons has, and what a good heart. A Cure for Dreams takes the reader down the back roads, and then points out what incredible lives are lived in those ordinary places.” —The Washington Post Book World

Margaret struggles toward adulthood in a world torn apart by the Second World War and complicated by her strong-willed mother, Sophia, and grandmother, Charlie Kate, in a story about three generations of passionate, willful Southern women

A sequel to the now-classic "Ellen Foster" picks up Ellen''s life five years later, at 15, with a new mother, a home, a mind too large for her surroundings, and a brave and compassionate integrity.

In the verdant backwoods of North Carolina, in a sad and singular era, the Birches are unique among women of their time-living gloriously rich it decidedly offbeat lives in a private world ahandoned by men. And though misery often heats a path to their door, headstrong Sophia and her y, brilliant daughter Margaret possess charms to ward off loneliness and despair-thanks to the uncompromising strength, uncommon wisdom, and muscular love of a remarkable matriarch and self-taught healer who calls herself Charlie Kate. In Charms for the Easy Life, Kaye Gibbons has created a luminous, truthtelling novel that gives life to her most passionate and toughminded women yet.

A Southern woman describes her life--from childhood on a plantation with a tyrannical father, to Civil War nurse in a military hospital with her surgeon husband, to pro-abolitionist in old age.

The acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Ellen Foster,Kaye Gibbons paints intimate family portraits in lyrical prose, using as her palette the rich, vibrant colors of the American South. Sights Unseen shows the author at her most passionate and heartfelt best -- an unforgettable tale of unconditional love, and of a family''s desperate search for normalcy in the midst of mental illness. It is a novel of rare poignancy, wit, and evocative power -- the story of the relationship between Hattie Barnes and her emotionally elusive mother, Maggie, known by their neighbors as "that Barnes woman with all the problems." This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

In her darkest yet most redeeming novel, Gibbons scorches us with a Þrestorm of despair-and then resurrects love and hope from its very ashes. Autumn 1918: Rumors of peace are spreading across America, but spreading even faster are the first cases of Spanish influenza, whispering of the epidemic to come. Maureen Ross, well past a safe childbearing age, is experiencing a difficult pregnancy. Her husband, Troop-cold and careless of her condition-is an emotional cripple who has battered her spirit throughout their marriage. As Maureen''s time grows near, she becomes convinced she will die in childbirth. Into this loveless ménage arrives Mary Oliver, Troop''s niece. The sheltered child of a well-to-do, freethinking Washington family, Mary comes to help Maureen in the last weeks of her confinement. Horrified by Troop''s bullying, she soon discovers that her true duty is to protect her aunt. As the influenza spreads and the death toll grows, Troop''s spiteful behaviors worsen. Tormenting his wife, taunting her for her "low birth," hiding her mother''s letters, Troop terrorizes the household. But when Mary fights back, he begins to go over the edge, and Maureen rallies, releasing a stunning thunderstorm of confrontation and, ultimately, finding spiritual renewal. The Boston Globe hailed On the Occasion of My Last Afternoonas "another gift from Kaye Gibbons to the literature celebrating strong women of every age and era." Much the same can be said of Divining Women.

Au soir de sa vie, " en son dernier après-midi ", Emma Garnet Tate se penche sur son passé. Elle a grandi sur une riche plantation de Virginie, entourée de cinq frères et sueurs, d''une mère aimante et profondément bonne, de Clarice, la vieille esclave noire adorée, mais surtout d''un père arriviste, tyrannique et raciste. Le jour où il tue un " nègre " sous ses yeux, Emma prend la fuite. Elle épouse Quincy, un chirurgien yankee, humaniste et défenseur de la cause des Noirs, auprès duquel elle trouve enfin la paix et fonde un foyer. Mais la guerre de Sécession éclate. Le couple choisit alors de se consacrer aux blessés, qu''ils soigneront jour et nuit, jusqu''à l''épuisement. Suivront les deuils, la solitude, les jours heureux aussi, où Emma puisera toujours la force de continuer à combattre contre toutes les injustices.

Dès son vingtième anniversaire, Clarissa Kate se révéla une sage-femme accomplie. Mariée par un pasteur itinérant sur les rives du Pasquotank, au sud reculé des Etats-Unis, elle devint célèbre pour être au fait, aussi bien des anomalies du corps et de l''âme, que des problèmes sociaux... La narratrice mêle ici la destinée de sa grand-mère et de sa mère au récit de sa propre existence. Trois femmes dont l''intelligence et le désir de vivre sont saisis au travers d''un vaste mouvement d''où toute pesanteur est exclue. Traduit de l''américain par Marie-Odile Fortier-Masek

An extract from an international celebration charting the 20th century - stories of poverty and wealth, work and play, tales of changing environments - both urban and rural, in peace and wartime.

" Un matin d''automne, mon père la surprit à genoux, sous un pin du jardin, en train d''arranger les aiguilles en un cercle parfait. Je me suis toujours demandé si elle avait pleuré en voyant le vent se lever. " Que penser lorsque votre père se réfugie chez les voisins pour fuir la libido débridée de votre mère ? Comment vivre auprès de cette mère, superbe, mais maniaco-dépressive, qui chambarde la ville, un jour dévalisant magasins de chaussures et le lendemain renversant une femme parce qu''elle lui vole son âme ?