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William Morrow
March 2018
On Sale: February 27, 2018
400 pages ISBN: 0062471716 EAN: 9780062471710 Kindle: B072HLSCGC Hardcover / e-Book
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Other Editions Paperback (reprint - March 2019)
Women's Fiction Historical
In the aftermath of a devastating tornado that rips
through the town of Tupelo, Mississippi, at the height of
the Great Depression, two women worlds apart—one black,
one white; one a great-grandmother, the other a teenager—
fight for their families’ survival in this lyrical and
powerful novel. A few minutes after 9 p.m. on Palm Sunday, April 5, 1936,
a massive funnel cloud flashing a giant fireball and
roaring like a runaway train careened into the thriving
cotton-mill town of Tupelo, Mississippi, killing more
than 200 people, not counting an unknown number of black
citizens, one-third of Tupelo’s population, who were not
included in the official casualty figures. When the tornado hits, Dovey, a local laundress, is flung
by the terrifying winds into a nearby lake. Bruised and
nearly drowned, she makes her way across Tupelo to find
her small family—her hardworking husband, Virgil, her
clever sixteen-year-old granddaughter, Dreama, and
Promise, Dreama’s beautiful light-skinned three-month-old
son. Slowly navigating the broken streets of Tupelo, Dovey
stops at the house of the despised McNabb family. Inside,
she discovers that the tornado has spared no one,
including Jo, the McNabbs’ dutiful teenage daughter, who
has suffered a terrible head wound. When Jo later
discovers a baby in the wreckage, she is certain that
she’s found her baby brother, Tommy, and vows to protect
him. During the harrowing hours and days of the chaos that
follows, Jo and Dovey will struggle to navigate a
landscape of disaster and to battle both the demons and
the history that link and haunt them. Drawing on
historical events, Minrose Gwin beautifully imagines
natural and human destruction in the deep South of the
1930s through the experiences of two remarkable women
whose lives are indelibly connected by forces beyond
their control. A story of loss, hope, despair, grit,
courage, and race, Promise reminds us of the
transformative power and promise that come from
confronting our most troubled relations with one another.
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