Goliath

By: Susan Woodring

Narrated by: Clarinda Ross

Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

When Percy Harding, Goliath’s most important citizen, is discovered dead by the railroad tracks outside of town one perfect autumn afternoon, no one can quite believe it’s really happened. Percy, the president of the town’s worldrenowned furniture company, had seemed invincible. Only Rosamond Rogers, Percy’s secretary, may have had a glimpse of how and why this great man has fallen, and that glimpse tugs at her, urges her to find out more.

Percy isn’t the first person to leave Rosamond - everybody seems to, from her husband, Hatley, who walked out on her years ago, to her complicated daughter Agnes, whose girlhood bedroom was papered with maps of the places she wanted to escape to. The town itself is Rosamond’s anchor, but it is beginning to quiver with the possibility of change. The high school girls are writing suicide poetry, the town’s young, lumbering sidewalk preacher is courting Rosamond’s daughter, a troubled teenage boy plans to burn Main Street to the ground, and the furniture factory itself - the very soul of Goliath - threatens to close.

In the wake of the town’s undoing, Rosamond seeks to reunite the griefshaken community. Goliath - a story of loss and love, of forgiveness and letting go - is a lyrical swoon of a novel by an exceptionally talented newcomer.

©2012 Susan Woodring (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“ Goliath brings small town life beautifully, achingly alive…A memorable novel.” (Ann Hood, best-selling author of The Knitting Circle)

“Woodring’s sense of the constraints and hardearned pleasures of home rings as true and pure as a train whistle in the night.” (Michael Parker, author of The Watery Part of the World)

“Woodring’s writing is so clear and moving that the reader often feels, as she says of one of her characters, as if ‘the world had been sucked clear of true sound.’ This beautiful portrait of a place and its people, rendered so quietly and intimately, shuts out the world outside its pages as you read. Only the best novels can make you forget yourself as reader. Goliath is the kind of book you don’t want to put down or to end.” (Brad Watson, author of The Heaven of Mercury)

OH MY GOSH!!!!!!!

I'M sure this book was a good one. I purchased it because of the reviews it got on amazon, not reading the reviews on Audible. I sure wish I had read the reviews! The narrator should be shot! Wow, I can't describe how painful it was listening to her awful dictation and unbelievable pacing and wrong inflection. My 6 yr old grandson does a better job reading out loud. Please take my advice and stick to the written copy of this book to save your sanity.

Like watching paint dry

I quit this one after 4 agonizing hours of nothing going nowhere. I wonder why this had good reviews from other listeners. Baffling.