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    Heart Spring Mountain: A Novel
    Heart Spring Mountain: A Novel
    Heart Spring Mountain: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    Heart Spring Mountain: A Novel

    Written by Robin MacArthur

    Narrated by Suzanne Elise Freeman

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    In this evocative first novel, a young woman returns to her rural Vermont hometown in the wake of a devastating storm to search for her missing mother and unravel a powerful family secret.

    It’s August 2011, and Tropical Storm Irene has just wreaked havoc on Vermont, flooding rivers and destroying homes. One thousand miles away—while tending bar in New Orleans—Vale receives a call and is told that her mother, Bonnie, has disappeared. Despite a years-long estrangement from Bonnie, Vale drops everything and returns home to look for her.

    Though the hometown Vale comes back to is not the one she left eight years earlier, she finds herself falling back into the lives of the family she thought she’d long since left behind. As Vale begins her search, the narrative opens up and pitches back and forth in time to follow three generations of women—a farming widow, a back-to-the-land dreamer, and an owl-loving hermit—as they seek love, bear children, and absorb losses. All the while, Vale’s search has her unwittingly careening toward a family origin secret more stunning than she ever imagined.

    Written with a striking sense of place, Heart Spring Mountain is an arresting novel about returning home, finding hope in the dark, and of the power of the land—and the stories it harbors—to connect and to heal. It’s also an absorbing exploration of the small fractures that can make families break-and the lasting ties that bind them together.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJan 9, 2018
    ISBN9780062797889
    Author

    Robin MacArthur

    Robin MacArthur lives and works on the farm where she was born in Vermont. She is the author of Half Wild: Stories (winner of the 2017 PEN/New England Award), the editor of Contemporary Vermont Fiction: An Anthology, and one-half of the indie-folk duo Red Heart the Ticker.

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    Reviews for Heart Spring Mountain

    3.5/5

    18 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      To sum it up “life is beautiful even in tragedy. Women suffer most.” I wanted to like this book. I tried very hard and stuck with it through the whole thing. Perhaps it is better to actually read it rather than listen. I felt like the characters were as distant from the reader as they were from each other, I had a difficult time caring about them. It just felt forced as though the author said “I want to write a moving book” but didn’t quite know how to accomplish it. There were definite flaws such as implying in the beginning that Vale is intuitive or psychic and dropping that completely. It was tough to follow the bouncing back and forth between characters and time. There was also a very distinct ending a couple chapters before it actually ended. It could have been a great book so I have it an extra star for potential although it is unrealized. Just a poorly executed book.
    • 1/5
      I just could not get into this book ---I skimmed it to see what was going to happen but the characters did not pull me in. I quickly found that I didn't want to get involved enough to see how they handled their lives. Unfortunately, this was recommended to me because of a radio interview someone had listened to with the author---would I have changed my mind if "I" had heard the interview myself?
    • 1/5
      I'm going to chalk this one up to a poor choice on my part. While I wish I had a secret formula for picking the right book at the right time, I don't. If you do, then please tell me how you do it. Why did I choose this novel? Simple—location: Vermont, where my family is from; theme: frayed mother-daughter relationship/redemption/family secrets, and premise: mother disappears in a storm, daughter returns to try and find her.  On the surface it ticked a lot of boxes for me, but once I started reading it was too fractured and I didn’t love the writing enough to stick with it.
    • 5/5
      4.5 This is the kind of book I best like to read. Quiet books that tell the story of land,, nature and the strong people who are tied to this place. The mountains of Vermont, the book begins with a hurricane and heroin. Bonnie has just shot up when the hurricane hits, her daughter n New Orleans, making a living as a barista and part time dancer. She receives a phone call that her mother is missing, and leaves immediately for home.Strong women, unforgettable women, flawed women and the generations that came before them all calling this place home. A land that has witnessed their secrets their betrayals and has kept them for a long time. Vale will return to a place and it's people that is in her blood. In her quest to find her mother she will uncover secrets kept, and those she loved changed. Older, but still full of love, want and need. A wonderful book of time and place.The novel goes back and forth in time, narrated by the different women who are family, make this place their home. I loved the way this was written, loved the meanings behind the words. Loved the sense of place and family. We learn the history of the women, share their secrets, see their flaws and come to admire them anyway. Such wonderful characters though some don't live to have a full life, they still are remembered, still love their mark. If you like the novels of [author:Amy Greene|1256071] or the novel [book:Mercy Snow|17869466], then you will love this as I did.ARC from Edelweiss.