Kaye Gibbons

"Filled with lively humor, compassion, and intimacy."—Alice Hoffman, The New York Times Book Review"When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy." With that opening sentence we enter the childhood world of one of the most appealing young heroines in contemporary fiction. Her courage, her humor, and her wisdom are unforgettable as she tells her own story with stunning honesty and insight. An Oprah Book Club selection, this powerful novel has become an American classic.Winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and the Ernest Hemingway Foundation's Citation for Fiction.

When Blinking Jack Stokes met Ruby Pitt Woodrow, she was twenty and he was forty. She was the carefully raised daughter of Carolina gentry and he was a skinny tenant farmer who had never owned anything in his life. She was newly widowed after a disastrous marriage to a brutal drifter. He had never asked a woman to do more than help him hitch a mule. They didn't fall in love so much as they simply found each other and held on for dear life.Kaye Gibbons's first novel, Ellen Foster , won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the praise of writers from Walker Percy to Eudora Welty. In A Virtuous Woman , Gibbons transcends her early promise, creating a multilayered and indelibly convincing portrait of two seemingly ill-matched people who somehow miraculously make a marriage.

A family without men, the Birches live gloriously offbeat lives in the lush, green backwoods of North Carolina. Radiant, headstrong Sophia and her shy, brilliant daughter, Margaret, possess powerful charms to ward off loneliness, despair, and the human misery that often beats a path to their door. And they are protected by the eccentric wisdom and muscular love of the remarkable matriarch Charlie Kate, a solid, uncompromising, self-taught healer who treats everything from boils to broken bones to broken hearts.Sophia, Margaret, and Charlie Kate find strength in a time when women almost always depended on men, and their bond deepens as each one experiences love and loss during World War II. Charms for the Easy Life is a passionate, luminous, and exhilarating story about embracing what life has to offer, even if it means finding it in unconventional ways.

“Deeply satisfying. . . . A muscular narrative that humanizes all sides of that bloody conflict—North and South, Black and white, male and female. . . a robust novel that deserves to be set on the shelf alongside Cold Mountain .” — Orlando Sentinel Emma Garnet Tate Lowell, a plantation owner's daughter, grows up in a privileged lifestyle, but it's not all roses. Her family's prosperity is linked to the institution of slavery, and Clarice, a close and trusted family servant, exposes Emma to the truth and history of their plantation and how it brutally affected the slave population. Her father, Samuel P. Tate, has an aggressive and overpowering persona that intimidates many people—including Emma. But she refuses to conform to his ideals and marries a prominent young doctor. Together they face the horrors of the Civil War, nursing wounded soldiers, as Emma begins the long journey toward her own recovery from the terrible forces that shaped her father's life. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

A story that traces the bonds between four generations of resourceful Southern women through stories passed from one generation to another.

The acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Ellen Foster,Kaye Gibbons paints intimate family portraits in lyrical prose, using as her palette the rich, vibrant colors of the American South. Sights Unseen shows the author at her most passionate and heartfelt best -- an unforgettable tale of unconditional love, and of a family's desperate search for normalcy in the midst of mental illness. It is a novel of rare poignancy, wit, and evocative power -- the story of the relationship between Hattie Barnes and her emotionally elusive mother, Maggie, known by their neighbors as "that Barnes woman with all the problems." This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

In this sequel to Gibbons’s beloved classic Ellen Foster, Ellen, now fifteen, is settled into a permanent home with a new mother. Strengthened by adversity and blessed with enough intelligence to design a salvation for herself, she still feels ill at ease. But while she holds fast to the shreds of her child­hood—humoring her best friend, Stuart, who is determined to marry her; and protecting her old neighbor, slow-witted Starletta—she begins to negotiate her way into a larger world. With a singular mix of perspicacity, naïveté, and compas­sion, Ellen draws us into her life and makes us fall in love with her all over again.

Autumn 1918: Rumors of peace are spreading across America, but spreading even faster are the first cases of Spanish influenza, whispering of the epidemic to come. Maureen Ross, well past a safe childbearing age, is experiencing a difficult pregnancy. Her husband, Troop-cold and careless of her condition-is an emotional cripple who has battered her spirit throughout their marriage. As Maureen's time grows near, she becomes convinced she will die in childbirth. Into this loveless ménage arrives Mary Oliver, Troop's niece. The sheltered child of a well-to-do, freethinking Washington family, Mary comes to help Maureen in the last weeks of her confinement. Horrified by Troop's bullying, she soon discovers that her true duty is to protect her aunt.As the influenza spreads and the death toll grows, Troop's spiteful behaviors worsen. Tormenting his wife, taunting her for her "low birth," hiding her mother's letters, Troop terrorizes the household. But when Mary fights back, he begins to go over the edge, and Maureen rallies, releasing a stunning thunderstorm of confrontation and, ultimately, finding spiritual renewal.

Kaye Gibbons 2 Book Set Charms for the Easy Life & Sights Unseen. Southern litrature genre.

Personal experience of someone afflicted with manic-depression.

175pages. in8. Broché. C'est dès son plus jeune âge que Lottie O'Cadhain initiera sa fille aux secrets de la écoute, Betty, fais bien attention à la façon dont les hommes appellent leurs femmes. Vieille bique ? Ça a l'air méchant mais en fait c'est gentil ccmme tout. Ma chère ou chérie, je ne leur ferai pas confiance. Chez les filles O'Cadhain, on ne se borne pas aux confidences. La petite risque de voir son prétendant lui échapper; qu'à cela ne tienne, sa mère rédigera elle-même la déclaration d'amour au beau récalcitrant. Betty hésite entre l'accouchement à domicile ou à l'hôpital; on joue cette grave situation à pile ou face. Chronique familiale enjouée, Histoires de faire de beaux rêves est un roman féminin pluriel. Marjorie Polly raconte l'histoire de sa mère, Betty, qui sans cesse parle de sa mère, Lottie. De génération en génération, leurs romans s'effeuillent ccmme un album. Un récit drôle et tendre tricoté à trois voix qui, à son tour, bercera le lecteur. On sort de ses romans pantois, vidé, émerveillé, et dans la tête une petite musique qui joue et jouera encore pendant des jours. (Christophe Guias, Le Point) Conte de fées moderne pour lequel la magie réside dans l'écriture. (Nicole Zand, Le Monde)

In the year 1900--on the afternoon she suspects might be the last in her long, eventful life--Emma Garnet Tate Lowell sets down on paper what came before, determined to make an honest account of it. She recalls her life on the plantation, her marriage to a Boston surgeon, her survival of the Civil War, and the terrible secret which shaped her father's life.

This sequel to Gibbons' beloved classic Ellen Foster stands on its own as an unforgettable portrait of a redoubtable adolescent making herself up out of whole cloth. Now 15, Ellen is settled into a permanent home with a new mother. Strengthened by adversity and blessed with enough intelligence to design a salvation for herself, she still feels ill at ease in the world. Her sole surviving ritual, a visit to the county fair, takes on totemic importance. While she holds fast to the shreds of her childhood, humoring her best friend, Stuart, who is determined to marry her; and protecting her old neighbor, slow-witted Starletta, she negotiates her way into a larger world by selling her poetry to pay her way to a camp for gifted students. With a singular mix of perspicacity, naivete, and compassion, Ellen draws us into her life and makes us fall in love with her all over again. Features an exclusive interview with the author.

An excellent portrait of a redoubtable adolescent making herself up out of whole cloth. strengthened by adversity and blessed with enough intelligence to design a salvation for herself, Ellen Foster has found a new mother and settled into a permanent home, though she still carries the burden of her mother's death and her father's abuse. While she holds on firmly to the shreds of her childhood, she negotiates her way into a larger world, setting her sights high, on Harvard. An engaging novel filled with love, fear, grief, tears & laughter, hope, wit and ingenuity, the reader will fall in love with the main character, Ellen. Great storytelling.

254pages. in8. Broché.