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HarperCollins
March 2012
On Sale: March 1, 2012
288 pages
ISBN: 0062089196
EAN: 9780062089199
Kindle: B005MMJHGE
Paperback / e-Book
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Historical
Allen Liles is a fictional character. I made her up. Her story is made up too. But not all of it. Part of itβs mine, handed on to her, altered to fit. Itβs an old story. Youβve heard it before, any number of times. But I wanted to tell it again, as it happened in a time and a place where something existed which nowadays, it seems to me, is in short supply: innocence. Innocence, of course, can lead to error, and error led to the expulsion from Eden. Or so it is generally considered . . . The time: 1941, at the cusp of Americaβs entry into WWII. The place: southwest Missouri, on the edge of the Ozark Mountains. A young, single woman named Allen Liles has taken a job as a junior college teacher in a small town, though she dreams of living in New York City, of dancing at recitals, of absorbing the bohemian delights of the Village. Then, in her seminar, she encounters two young men: George, a lanky, carefree spirit, and Toby, a dark-haired, searching soul with a wary look in his eyes. Soon the three strike up an after-school friendship, bantering and debating over letters, ethics, and philosophyβinnocently at first, but soon in giddy flirtation, until the moment when Allen and one of the young men push things too far and her world is sent spinning into a state of wrenching pain and dire jeopardy. Building upon the frankness and emotional acuity of The Moonflower Vine, author Jetta Carleton returns us to her richly developed fictional world in this very personal and uniquely enchanting novelβand reminds us that even simpler times have always been fraught with conflicts of the heart.
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