Bloodroot

By: Amy Greene

Narrated by: Lorna Raver, Kirby Heyborne, Jessie Bernstein, Rebecca Lowman, Emily Janice Card, Richard McGonagle

Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses the power both to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legacies - of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss - that haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today.

The novel is told in a kaleidoscope of seamlessly woven voices and centers around an incendiary romance that consumes everyone in its path: Myra Lamb, a wild young girl with mysterious, haint blue eyes who grows up on remote Bloodroot Mountain; her grandmother Byrdie Lamb, who protects Myra fiercely and passes down "the touch" that bewitches people and animals alike; the neighbor boy who longs for Myra yet is destined never to have her; the twin children Myra is forced to abandon but who never forget their mother's deep love; and John Odom, the man who tries to tame Myra and meets with shocking, violent disaster. Against the backdrop of a beautiful but often unforgiving country, these lives come together - only to be torn apart - as a dark, riveting mystery unfolds.

With grace and unflinching verisimilitude, Amy Greene brings her native Appalachia - and the faith and fury of its people - to rich and vivid life. Here is a spellbinding tour de force that announces a dazzlingly fresh, natural-born storyteller in our midst.

©2009 Amy Greene (P)2009 Random House

i hate to waste money

i have read a lot of classics in my life, this was not one of them. i kept waiting for something to elevate this book. the closest it came are the wonderful descriptions of the landscape. yes, that was great writing. but the endless droning on and on of one tragedy after another, one hopeless word after another got to be too much for me.

the most depressing book i ever read was L Assimoir by Zola. i cried my heart out at the end of it. for some reason i never made any kind of similar connection with these characters. they are not shallow. they simply have no redeeming qualities. from the beginning of the book to the last second i listened, i never smiled once. i never felt i was rooting for them, only watching their deterioration. i never felt any magic except for the color of the eyes of the horse.

i lived in a holler once for about a year and there was such poverty and tragedy there. that is true. but the people i met there were some incredibly funny, feisty, strong fighters. they would tell you their tragedy while preparing poke salad for you to eat and then end the whole thing with strawberries and a laugh.

maybe it is only the audio. but these people sounded like they should have been sitting in a psychologist s office, not hanging about in my ear. i really expected to like this book.

Super depressing with many loose ends

I listened to this book based on its generally favorable reviews, but unfortunately is was a big waste of time. I trudged through the different story lines as they got more and more depressing because I thought the ending would have to connect all the subplots and character actions, but it doesn't. There are no characters that you can really root for or connect with. The only positive of this book were the different narrators. They were very good. Don't waste your time with this book.