On Sale: Jan 3, 1991
Page Count: 192 pages
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN-13: 9781565126909

$11.99

$15.99 CAD

Format

ebook (Digital original)

Format:

ebook (Digital original) $11.99 $15.99 CAD

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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

Genre:

Fiction Southern

Kaye Gibbons was born in Nash County, North Carolina and attended Rocky Mount Senior High School, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her first novel, Ellen Foster, was awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction of the American Academy and Institute of the Arts and Letters and a special citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation. She has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and was recently awarded the PEN/Revson Fellowship for A Cure for Dreams. She is writer-in-residence at the Library of North Carolina State University. She and her husband, Michael, and their three daughters Mary, Leslie and Louise, live in Raleigh.