Godwin, Gail Flora: A Novel ISBN 13: 9781620401224

Flora: A Novel - Softcover

9781620401224: Flora: A Novel
View all copies of this ISBN edition:
 
 

Ten-year-old Helen and her summer guardian, Flora, are isolated together in Helen's decaying family house while her father is doing secret war work in Oak Ridge during the final months of World War II. At three, Helen lost her mother, and the beloved grandmother who raised her has just died. A fiercely imaginative child, Helen is desperate to keep her house intact with all its ghosts and stories. Flora, her late mother's twenty-two-year-old first cousin, who cries at the drop of a hat, is ardently determined to do her best for Helen. Their relationship and its fallout, played against a backdrop of a lost America, will haunt Helen for the rest of her life.

This darkly beautiful novel about a child and a caretaker in isolation evokes shades of The Turn of the Screw and also harks back to Godwin's memorable novel of growing up The Finishing School. With a house on top of a mountain and a child who may be a bomb that will one day go off, Flora tells a story of love, regret, and the things we can't undo.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:
Gail Godwin is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the bestselling author of twelve critically acclaimed novels, including A Mother and Two Daughters, The Good Husband, Father Melancholy's Daughter, and Evensong. She is also the author of The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961-1963, the first of two volumes, edited by Rob Neufeld. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts grants for both fiction and libretto writing, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Woodstock, New York. Visit her website at www.gailgodwin.com.
From Booklist:
*Starred Review* Godwin, celebrated for her literary finesse, presents a classic southern tale galvanic with decorous yet stabbing sarcasm and jolting tragedy. Helen, a writer, looks back to the fateful summer of 1945, when she was a precocious, motherless 10-year-old trying to make sense of a complicated and unjust world. Young Helen lives on a hill in North Carolina in an old, rambling, haunted house that was once a sanatorium for folks she calls the Recoverers. Raised by her immaculately turned-out, tart-tongued, and stoic grandmother, whom she worships, Helen is bereft after Nonie’s sudden death. Worse yet, her father is summoned to work on the secret military project at Oak Ridge. He recruits a 22-year-old Alabaman cousin to stay in his place. Sweet, emotional, and seemingly guileless Flora is no match for feverishly imaginative, scheming, and condescending Helen. When a polio outbreak keeps them at home, and a war veteran begins delivering their groceries, tension builds. Godwin’s under-your-skin characters are perfectly realized, and the held-breath plot is consummately choreographed. But the wonder of this incisive novel of the endless repercussions of loss and remorse at the dawn of the atomic age is how subtly Godwin laces it with exquisite insights into secret family traumas, unspoken sexuality, class and racial divides, and the fallout of war while unveiling the incubating mind of a future writer. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Godwin is always in demand, and with early accolades for this tour de force from the likes of John Irving, requests will multiply. --Donna Seaman

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

  • PublisherBloomsbury USA
  • Publication date2014
  • ISBN 10 1620401223
  • ISBN 13 9781620401224
  • BindingPaperback
  • Number of pages304
  • Rating

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9781620401200: Flora: A Novel

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9781620401200
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2013
Hardcover

  • 9781408840863: Flora

    Blooms..., 2013
    Hardcover

  • 9781408840894: Flora

    Blooms..., 2014
    Softcover

  • 9781408840870: Flora

    Blooms..., 2013
    Softcover

  • 9781444820911: Flora

    Charnwood
    Hardcover

Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace

Stock Image

Godwin Gail
ISBN 10: 1620401223 ISBN 13: 9781620401224
New Quantity: > 20
Seller:
INDOO
(Avenel, NJ, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. Brand New. Seller Inventory # 1620401223

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 10.47
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 3.99
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Godwin, Gail
Published by Bloomsbury USA (2014)
ISBN 10: 1620401223 ISBN 13: 9781620401224
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
Sequitur Books
(Boonsboro, MD, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. Softcover. Good binding and cover. Clean, unmarked pages. Seller Inventory # 2401040019

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 11.00
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.99
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Godwin, Gail
Published by Bloomsbury USA (2014)
ISBN 10: 1620401223 ISBN 13: 9781620401224
New Softcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
GF Books, Inc.
(Hawthorne, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. Book is in NEW condition. Seller Inventory # 1620401223-2-1

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 25.92
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Godwin, Gail
Published by Bloomsbury USA (2014)
ISBN 10: 1620401223 ISBN 13: 9781620401224
New Softcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Book Deals
(Tucson, AZ, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. New! This book is in the same immaculate condition as when it was published. Seller Inventory # 353-1620401223-new

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 25.93
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Godwin, Gail
Published by Bloomsbury USA (2014)
ISBN 10: 1620401223 ISBN 13: 9781620401224
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
GoldenWavesOfBooks
(Fayetteville, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New. Fast Shipping and good customer service. Seller Inventory # Holz_New_1620401223

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 22.91
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.00
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Godwin, Gail
Published by Bloomsbury USA (2014)
ISBN 10: 1620401223 ISBN 13: 9781620401224
New Paperback Quantity: 2
Seller:
Save With Sam
(North Miami, FL, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. Brand New!. Seller Inventory # VIB1620401223

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 29.98
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Godwin, Gail
Published by Bloomsbury USA (2014)
ISBN 10: 1620401223 ISBN 13: 9781620401224
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
GoldBooks
(Austin, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed. Seller Inventory # think1620401223

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 26.64
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.25
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Godwin, Gail
Published by Bloomsbury (2014)
ISBN 10: 1620401223 ISBN 13: 9781620401224
New Softcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Front Cover Books
(Denver, CO, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: new. Seller Inventory # FrontCover1620401223

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 29.43
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.30
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Godwin, Gail
Published by Bloomsbury Pub Plc USA (2014)
ISBN 10: 1620401223 ISBN 13: 9781620401224
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
Revaluation Books
(Exeter, United Kingdom)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. reprint edition. 294 pages. 8.25x5.51x1.00 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # 1620401223

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 33.40
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 12.62
From United Kingdom to U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Godwin, Gail
Published by Bloomsbury USA (2014)
ISBN 10: 1620401223 ISBN 13: 9781620401224
New Softcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
BennettBooksLtd
(LOS ANGELES, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 0.6. Seller Inventory # Q-1620401223

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 58.00
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.13
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds