-
Barkskins
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 25 hrs and 53 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $26.24
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
That Old Ace in the Hole
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole is told through the eyes of Bob Dollar, a young Denver man trying to make good in a bad world. Dollar is out of college but aimless, when he takes a job with Global Pork Rind - his task to locate big spreads of land in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles that can be purchased by the corporation and converted to hog farms.
-
-
Doesn't work as a novel
- By Sarah C on 05-30-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
The Shipping News
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At 36, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman, is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife gets her just desserts. He retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As three generations of his family cobble up new lives, Quoyle confronts his private demons - and the unpredictable forces of nature and society - and begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery.
-
-
Can't Explain Why I Love This Book
- By Polly on 03-06-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
Fen, Bog and Swamp
- A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A lifelong acolyte of the natural world, Annie Proulx brings her witness and research to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment—by storing the carbon emissions that accelerate climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are crucial to the earth’s survival, and in four illuminating parts, Proulx documents their systemic destruction in pursuit of profit. Proulx describes the fens of 16th-century England, Canada’s Hudson Bay lowlands, Russia’s Great Vasyugan Mire, and America’s Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.
-
-
Enjoyable Discourse on Wetlands
- By T.J. on 10-29-22
By: Annie Proulx
-
Close Range
- Wyoming Stories (Selected Unabridged Stories)
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Frances Fisher, Bruce Greenwood, Campbell Scott
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. In "The Mud Below", a rodeo rider's obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In "The Half-Skinned Steer", an elderly fool drives west to the ranch he grew up on for his brother's funeral, and dies a mile from home.
-
-
A Wonderfully Ironic and Surprising Read
- By Susan L. Stewart on 04-21-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
That Old Ace in the Hole
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole is told through the eyes of Bob Dollar, a young Denver man trying to make good in a bad world. Dollar is out of college but aimless, when he takes a job with Global Pork Rind - his task to locate big spreads of land in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles that can be purchased by the corporation and converted to hog farms.
-
-
Doesn't work as a novel
- By Sarah C on 05-30-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
The Shipping News
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At 36, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman, is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife gets her just desserts. He retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As three generations of his family cobble up new lives, Quoyle confronts his private demons - and the unpredictable forces of nature and society - and begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery.
-
-
Can't Explain Why I Love This Book
- By Polly on 03-06-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
Fen, Bog and Swamp
- A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A lifelong acolyte of the natural world, Annie Proulx brings her witness and research to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment—by storing the carbon emissions that accelerate climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are crucial to the earth’s survival, and in four illuminating parts, Proulx documents their systemic destruction in pursuit of profit. Proulx describes the fens of 16th-century England, Canada’s Hudson Bay lowlands, Russia’s Great Vasyugan Mire, and America’s Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.
-
-
Enjoyable Discourse on Wetlands
- By T.J. on 10-29-22
By: Annie Proulx
-
Close Range
- Wyoming Stories (Selected Unabridged Stories)
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Frances Fisher, Bruce Greenwood, Campbell Scott
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. In "The Mud Below", a rodeo rider's obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In "The Half-Skinned Steer", an elderly fool drives west to the ranch he grew up on for his brother's funeral, and dies a mile from home.
-
-
A Wonderfully Ironic and Surprising Read
- By Susan L. Stewart on 04-21-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
The Covenant of Water
- By: Abraham Verghese
- Narrated by: Abraham Verghese
- Length: 31 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.
-
-
Story Telling At Its Best
- By Regina on 05-06-23
By: Abraham Verghese
-
The Overstory
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fable that range from antebellum New York to the late 20th-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. An air force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits 100 years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light.
-
-
eye opening
- By Michael Stansberry on 05-23-18
By: Richard Powers
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
-
-
Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
-
Remarkably Bright Creatures
- A Novel
- By: Shelby Van Pelt
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Michael Urie
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.
-
-
Hidden gem, incredible narration!
- By Christine T on 05-17-22
By: Shelby Van Pelt
-
Horse
- A Novel
- By: Geraldine Brooks
- Narrated by: James Fouhey, Lisa Flanagan, Graham Halstead, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.
-
-
Love Geraldine Brooks
- By Regina on 06-25-22
By: Geraldine Brooks
-
The Wager
- A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
- By: David Grann
- Narrated by: Dion Graham, David Grann
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia.
-
-
Gasping for Air
- By Jean Engle on 04-19-23
By: David Grann
-
The Grapes of Wrath
- By: John Steinbeck, Robert DeMott
- Narrated by: Dylan Baker
- Length: 21 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shocking and controversial when it was first published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer prize-winning epic The Grapes of Wrath remains his undisputed masterpiece. Set against the background of Dust Bowl Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, it tells of Tom Joad and his family, who, like thousands of others, are forced to travel west in search of the promised land. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires, and broken dreams, yet out of their suffering Steinbeck created a drama that is intensely human, yet majestic in its scale and moral vision.
-
-
Wish I could give it 10 stars!
- By P. Minor on 07-18-14
By: John Steinbeck, and others
-
Parable of the Sower
- By: Octavia E. Butler
- Narrated by: Lynne Thigpen
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
God is change. That is the central truth of the Earthseed movement, whose unlikely prophet is 18-year-old Lauren Olamina. The young woman's diary entries tell the story of her life amid a violent 21st-century hell of walled neighborhoods and drug-crazed pyromaniacs - and reveal her evolving Earthseed philosophy. Against a backdrop of horror emerges a message of hope: if we are willing to embrace divine change, we will survive to fulfill our destiny among the stars.
-
-
Dystopia before dystopia was cool...
- By Amber on 05-28-14
-
The Valley
- The Valley Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Helen Bryan
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 21 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Left suddenly penniless, the Honorable Sophia Grafton, a viscount's orphaned daughter, sails to the New World to claim the only property left to her name: a tobacco plantation in the remote wilds of colonial Virginia. Enlisting the reluctant assistance of a handsome young French spy - at gunpoint - she gathers an unlikely group of escaped slaves and indentured servants, each seeking their own safe haven in the untamed New World.
-
-
My Favorite Author
- By HL on 08-29-16
By: Helen Bryan
-
Pachinko
- By: Min Jin Lee
- Narrated by: Allison Hiroto
- Length: 18 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year and National Book Award finalist, Pachinko is an "extraordinary epic" of four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family as they fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan (San Francisco Chronicle). In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant - and that her lover is married - she refuses to be bought.
-
-
wonderful book
- By erin on 12-11-17
By: Min Jin Lee
-
The Good Earth
- By: Pearl S. Buck
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This Pulitzer Prize-winning classic tells the poignant tale of a Chinese farmer and his family in old agrarian China. The humble Wang Lung glories in the soil he works, nurturing the land as it nurtures him and his family. Nearby, the nobles of the House of Hwang consider themselves above the land and its workers; but they will soon meet their own downfall. The working people riot, breaking into the homes of the rich and forcing them to flee. When Wang Lung shows mercy to one noble and is rewarded, he begins to rise in the world, even as the House of Hwang falls.
-
-
Wow
- By Ryan on 05-08-10
By: Pearl S. Buck
Publisher's summary
Now a television mini-series airing on National Geographic May 2020!
A Washington Post Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain comes the New York Times best-selling epic about the demise of the world’s forests.
“Barkskins is grand entertainment in the tradition of Dickens and Tolstoy…the crowning achievement of Annie Proulx’s distinguished career, but also perhaps the greatest environmental novel ever written.” (San Francisco Chronicle).
In the late 17th century, two young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters — barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a native woman and their descendants live trapped between two cultures. But Duquet runs away, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Annie Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over 300 years — their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealand — the revenge of rivals, accidents, pestilence, Indian attacks, and cultural annihilation. Over and over, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse.
“A stunning, bracing, full-tilt ride through three hundred years of US and Canadian history…with the type of full-immersion plot that keeps you curled in your chair, reluctant to stop reading” (Elle), Barkskins showcases Proulx’s inimitable genius of creating characters who are so vivid that we follow them with fierce attention.
“This is Proulx at the height of her powers as an irreplaceable American voice” (Entertainment Weekly, Grade A), and Barkskins “is an awesome monument of a book” (The Washington Post) — “the masterpiece she was meant to write” (The Boston Globe).
As Anthony Doerr says, “This magnificent novel possesses the dark humor of The Shipping News and the social awareness of Brokeback Mountain."
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Critic reviews
More from the same
Related to this topic
-
Walk In My Soul
- By: Lucia St. Clair Robson
- Narrated by: Laurie Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tiana was a Cherokee woman. She grew up learning the magic, spells, and nature religion of her people. Before Sam Houston became the father of Texas, he was a young man who had run away from his home in Tennessee to live among the Cherokee. He came to love Tiana. As the Cherokee would say, she walked in his soul. But Sam was a white man, and Tiana, a Cherokee. And the dreams each had for their land and their people were far apart.
-
-
i honestly don't know what is going in this book
- By Bryntainia Holloway on 09-21-19
-
Varina
- A Novel
- By: Charles Frazier
- Narrated by: Molly Parker
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects a life of security as a landowner. He instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot center of one of the darkest moments in American history - culpable regardless of her intentions. The Confederacy falling, her marriage in tatters, and the country divided, Varina and her children escape Richmond and travel south on their own, now fugitives.
-
-
Read it rather than listen
- By Anonymous on 08-31-18
By: Charles Frazier
-
Thieving Forest
- By: Martha Conway
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a humid day in June 1806, on the edge of Ohio's Great Black Swamp, 17-year-old Susanna Quiner watches from behind a maple tree as a band of Potawatomi Indians kidnaps her four older sisters from their cabin. With both her parents dead and all the other settlers out in their fields, Susanna makes the rash decision to pursue them herself. What follows is a young woman's quest to find her sisters and the parallel story of her sisters' new lives.
-
-
Skip the audiobook, read the real thing.
- By Kelly on 11-26-15
By: Martha Conway
-
The Winemaker
- By: Noah Gordon
- Narrated by: Jamie Renell
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the author of The Physician and Shaman now comes this story of a young man - the grapes he grows, the wine he fashions, the women he loves, and his struggle against an evil that seeks to destroy him. Josep Alvarez is a young man in the tiny grape-growing village of Santa Eulália, in Northern Spain, where his father grows black grapes that are turned into cheap vinegar. In Madrid, an assassination plot creates a storm of intrigue that sucks into its vortex a group of innocent young farm workers in Santa Eulália.
-
-
Inspiring, true to life
- By Cody W. on 12-18-20
By: Noah Gordon
-
Mrs. Mike
- By: Benedict Freedman, Nancy Freedman
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A moving love story set in the Canadian wilderness, Mrs. Mike is a classic tale that has enchanted millions of readers worldwide. It brings the fierce, stunning landscape of Canada to life and tenderly evokes the love that blossoms between Sergeant Mike Flannigan and beautiful young Katherine Mary O'Fallon.
-
-
How could I have missed this all these years?
- By Dale C. Farran on 01-30-10
By: Benedict Freedman, and others
-
The Unreal and the Real
- Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin, Volume One: Where on Earth
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Tandy Cronyn
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Unreal and the Real is a major event not to be missed. In this two-volume selection of Ursula K. Le Guin's best short stories--as selected by the National Book Award winning author herself--the reader will be delighted, provoked, amused, and faced with the sharp, satirical voice of one of the best short story writers of the present day. Where on Earth explores Le Guin's earthbound stories which range around the world, from small town Oregon to middle Europe in the middle of revolution to summer camp.
-
-
Shame on you, Audible
- By Audrey McCombs on 07-03-20
-
Walk In My Soul
- By: Lucia St. Clair Robson
- Narrated by: Laurie Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tiana was a Cherokee woman. She grew up learning the magic, spells, and nature religion of her people. Before Sam Houston became the father of Texas, he was a young man who had run away from his home in Tennessee to live among the Cherokee. He came to love Tiana. As the Cherokee would say, she walked in his soul. But Sam was a white man, and Tiana, a Cherokee. And the dreams each had for their land and their people were far apart.
-
-
i honestly don't know what is going in this book
- By Bryntainia Holloway on 09-21-19
-
Varina
- A Novel
- By: Charles Frazier
- Narrated by: Molly Parker
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects a life of security as a landowner. He instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot center of one of the darkest moments in American history - culpable regardless of her intentions. The Confederacy falling, her marriage in tatters, and the country divided, Varina and her children escape Richmond and travel south on their own, now fugitives.
-
-
Read it rather than listen
- By Anonymous on 08-31-18
By: Charles Frazier
-
Thieving Forest
- By: Martha Conway
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a humid day in June 1806, on the edge of Ohio's Great Black Swamp, 17-year-old Susanna Quiner watches from behind a maple tree as a band of Potawatomi Indians kidnaps her four older sisters from their cabin. With both her parents dead and all the other settlers out in their fields, Susanna makes the rash decision to pursue them herself. What follows is a young woman's quest to find her sisters and the parallel story of her sisters' new lives.
-
-
Skip the audiobook, read the real thing.
- By Kelly on 11-26-15
By: Martha Conway
-
The Winemaker
- By: Noah Gordon
- Narrated by: Jamie Renell
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the author of The Physician and Shaman now comes this story of a young man - the grapes he grows, the wine he fashions, the women he loves, and his struggle against an evil that seeks to destroy him. Josep Alvarez is a young man in the tiny grape-growing village of Santa Eulália, in Northern Spain, where his father grows black grapes that are turned into cheap vinegar. In Madrid, an assassination plot creates a storm of intrigue that sucks into its vortex a group of innocent young farm workers in Santa Eulália.
-
-
Inspiring, true to life
- By Cody W. on 12-18-20
By: Noah Gordon
-
Mrs. Mike
- By: Benedict Freedman, Nancy Freedman
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A moving love story set in the Canadian wilderness, Mrs. Mike is a classic tale that has enchanted millions of readers worldwide. It brings the fierce, stunning landscape of Canada to life and tenderly evokes the love that blossoms between Sergeant Mike Flannigan and beautiful young Katherine Mary O'Fallon.
-
-
How could I have missed this all these years?
- By Dale C. Farran on 01-30-10
By: Benedict Freedman, and others
-
The Unreal and the Real
- Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin, Volume One: Where on Earth
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrated by: Tandy Cronyn
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Unreal and the Real is a major event not to be missed. In this two-volume selection of Ursula K. Le Guin's best short stories--as selected by the National Book Award winning author herself--the reader will be delighted, provoked, amused, and faced with the sharp, satirical voice of one of the best short story writers of the present day. Where on Earth explores Le Guin's earthbound stories which range around the world, from small town Oregon to middle Europe in the middle of revolution to summer camp.
-
-
Shame on you, Audible
- By Audrey McCombs on 07-03-20
-
The Irishman's Daughter
- By: V.S. Alexander
- Narrated by: Lucy Rayner
- Length: 16 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ireland, 1845. To Briana Walsh, no place on earth is more beautiful than Carrowteige, County Mayo. The small farms that surround the centuries-old Lear House are managed by her father, agent to the wealthy, reckless Sir Thomas Blakely. Tenant farmers sell the oats and rye they grow to pay rent to Sir Thomas, surviving on the potatoes that flourish in the remaining scraps of land. But when the potato crop falls prey to a devastating blight, families Briana has known all her life are left with no food, no resources, and no mercy from the English landowner.
-
-
Wasted a credit
- By Emily Coonce on 05-26-19
By: V.S. Alexander
-
Shadows on the Rock
- By: Willa Cather
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1697, Quebec is an island of French civilization perched on a bare gray rock amid a wilderness of trackless forests. For many of its settlers, Quebec is a place of exile, so remote that an entire winter passes without a word from home. But to 12-year-old Cécile Auclair, the rock is home, where even the formidable Governor Frontenac entertains children in his palace and beavers lie beside the lambs in a Christmas créche.
-
-
wonderful
- By carol perez on 05-18-21
By: Willa Cather
-
March
- By: Geraldine Brooks
- Narrated by: Richard Easton
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March, and crafted a story "filled with the ache of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unforgettable man" (Sue Monk Kidd). With "pitch-perfect writing" (USA Today), Brooks follows March as he leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause in the Civil War. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs.
-
-
Great book, greatly narrated
- By Paula on 07-30-06
By: Geraldine Brooks
-
Far North
- A Novel
- By: Marcel Theroux
- Narrated by: Yelena Schmulenson
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
My father had an expression for a thing that turned out bad. He'd say it had gone west. But going west always sounded pretty good to me. After all, westwards is the path of the sun. And through as much history as I know of, people have moved west to settle and find freedom. But our world had gone north, truly gone north, and just how far north I was beginning to learn.
-
-
Spellbinding!
- By Joan on 01-14-10
By: Marcel Theroux
-
Shaman's Crossing, Book One of the Soldier Son Trilogy
- By: Robin Hobb
- Narrated by: John Keating
- Length: 24 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hugo and Nebula Award finalist Robin Hobb crafts intricate fantasy tales featuring larger-than-life characters and exotic landscapes. Nevare Burvelle survives the King’s Cavalla Academy—where nepotism and corruption reign—to become a soldier in the Gernian king’s army. As he and his fellow soldiers are thrust onto the front lines of the king’s brutal territorial expansion campaign, they struggle against the Plainspeople—forest-dwellers who possess a powerful magic long dismissed by the Gernians.
-
-
Sometimes Magic Isn't A Good Thing
- By Therese M. Woolley on 10-18-13
By: Robin Hobb
-
I Heard the Owl Call My Name
- By: Margaret Craven
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The touching story of a young, mortally ill priest who spends his last days working among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia.
-
-
Uncanny insight...
- By MetaThink on 03-22-15
By: Margaret Craven
-
Clearing in the Wild
- By: Jane Kirkpatrick
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Young Emma Wagner chafes at the constraints of Bethel colony, an 1850s religious community in Missouri that is determined to remain untainted by the concerns of the world. A passionate and independent thinker, she resents the limitations placed on women, who are expected to serve in quiet submission.
-
-
a clearing in the wild
- By katie on 07-21-09
By: Jane Kirkpatrick
-
Darwinia
- By: Robert Charles Wilson
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1912, history was changed by the Miracle, when the old world of Europe was replaced by Darwinia, a strange land of nightmarish jungle and antediluvian monsters. To some, the Miracle was an act of divine retribution; to others, it is an opportunity to carve out a new empire. Leaving an America now ruled by religious fundamentalists, young Guilford Law travels to Darwinia on a mission of discovery that will take him further than he can possibly imagine.
-
-
Not much about Darwinia.
- By Clavaine on 10-02-09
-
The Plague of Doves
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James, Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
-
-
Avoid this Plague
- By Andre on 05-16-08
By: Louise Erdrich
-
Green City in the Sun
- By: Barbara Wood
- Narrated by: Edie Tusor
- Length: 27 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1917 Dr. Grace Treverton arrives in Kenya determined to bring modern medicine to the African natives. Her brother, Sir Valentine Treverton, has his own dream for the British protectorate: to establish an agricultural empire to rival any in England. The aspirations of the wealthy Trevertons collide with those of the Mathenge tribe, an African family that has lived on the land for years. Grace soon finds a deadly rival in Mama Wachera, an African medicine woman who fights to maintain native traditions against the encroaching whites.
-
-
Beautifully written
- By nancy wanty on 12-18-23
By: Barbara Wood
-
Drums Along the Mohawk
- By: Walter D. Edmonds
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 21 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drums along the Mohawk, Walter D. Edmonds' masterpiece, is not only the best historical novel about upstate New York since James Fenimore Cooper, it was also number one on the bestseller list for two years, only yielding to the epic Gone with the Wind. This is the story of the forgotten pioneers of the Mohawk Valley during the Revolutionary War. Here Gilbert Martin and his young wife struggled and lived and hoped.
-
-
Wonderful
- By Robert on 09-06-15
-
At the Edge of the Orchard
- By: Tracy Chevalier
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber, Mark Bramhall, Kirby Heyborne, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1838: James and Sadie Goodenough have settled where their wagon got stuck - in the muddy, stagnant swamps of northwest Ohio. They and their five children work relentlessly to tame their patch of land, buying saplings from a local tree man known as John Appleseed so they can cultivate the 50 apple trees required to stake their claim on the property. But the orchard they plant sows the seeds of a long battle. James loves the apples, reminders of an easier life back in Connecticut; while Sadie prefers the applejack they make, an alcoholic refuge from brutal frontier life.
-
-
The performance was superb
- By cheryl retired bookseller on 05-30-17
By: Tracy Chevalier
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
That Old Ace in the Hole
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole is told through the eyes of Bob Dollar, a young Denver man trying to make good in a bad world. Dollar is out of college but aimless, when he takes a job with Global Pork Rind - his task to locate big spreads of land in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles that can be purchased by the corporation and converted to hog farms.
-
-
Doesn't work as a novel
- By Sarah C on 05-30-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
Fen, Bog and Swamp
- A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A lifelong acolyte of the natural world, Annie Proulx brings her witness and research to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment—by storing the carbon emissions that accelerate climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are crucial to the earth’s survival, and in four illuminating parts, Proulx documents their systemic destruction in pursuit of profit. Proulx describes the fens of 16th-century England, Canada’s Hudson Bay lowlands, Russia’s Great Vasyugan Mire, and America’s Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.
-
-
Enjoyable Discourse on Wetlands
- By T.J. on 10-29-22
By: Annie Proulx
-
Accordion Crimes
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 18 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Accordion Crimes opens in 1890 in Sicily as an accordion maker completes his finest instrument and dreams of owning a music store in America. He and his 11-year-old son, carrying little more than the accordion, voyage to the teeming, violent port of New Orleans. Within a year, the accordion maker is murdered by an anti-Italian lynching mob, but his instrument carries Proulx's story as it falls into the hands of various immigrants who carry it from Iowa to Texas, from Maine to Louisiana, looking for a decent life.
-
-
Just too depressing
- By Annette Grefe on 06-14-11
By: Annie Proulx
-
The Shipping News
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At 36, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman, is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife gets her just desserts. He retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As three generations of his family cobble up new lives, Quoyle confronts his private demons - and the unpredictable forces of nature and society - and begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery.
-
-
Can't Explain Why I Love This Book
- By Polly on 03-06-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
Close Range
- Wyoming Stories (Selected Unabridged Stories)
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Frances Fisher, Bruce Greenwood, Campbell Scott
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. In "The Mud Below", a rodeo rider's obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In "The Half-Skinned Steer", an elderly fool drives west to the ranch he grew up on for his brother's funeral, and dies a mile from home.
-
-
A Wonderfully Ironic and Surprising Read
- By Susan L. Stewart on 04-21-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
The Power of the Dog
- A Novel
- By: Thomas Savage, Annie Proulx - afterword
- Narrated by: Chad Michael Collins, Annie Proulx
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the wide-open spaces of the American West, The Power of the Dog is a stunning story of domestic tyranny, brutal masculinity, and thrilling defiance from one of the most powerful and distinctive voices in American literature. The novel tells the story of two brothers—one magnetic but cruel, the other gentle and quiet—and of the mother and son whose arrival on the brothers’ ranch shatters an already tenuous peace.
-
-
Abrupt Ending and Hard to Follow Story
- By Trevor on 09-08-21
By: Thomas Savage, and others
-
That Old Ace in the Hole
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole is told through the eyes of Bob Dollar, a young Denver man trying to make good in a bad world. Dollar is out of college but aimless, when he takes a job with Global Pork Rind - his task to locate big spreads of land in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles that can be purchased by the corporation and converted to hog farms.
-
-
Doesn't work as a novel
- By Sarah C on 05-30-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
Fen, Bog and Swamp
- A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A lifelong acolyte of the natural world, Annie Proulx brings her witness and research to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment—by storing the carbon emissions that accelerate climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are crucial to the earth’s survival, and in four illuminating parts, Proulx documents their systemic destruction in pursuit of profit. Proulx describes the fens of 16th-century England, Canada’s Hudson Bay lowlands, Russia’s Great Vasyugan Mire, and America’s Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.
-
-
Enjoyable Discourse on Wetlands
- By T.J. on 10-29-22
By: Annie Proulx
-
Accordion Crimes
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Tom Stechschulte
- Length: 18 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Accordion Crimes opens in 1890 in Sicily as an accordion maker completes his finest instrument and dreams of owning a music store in America. He and his 11-year-old son, carrying little more than the accordion, voyage to the teeming, violent port of New Orleans. Within a year, the accordion maker is murdered by an anti-Italian lynching mob, but his instrument carries Proulx's story as it falls into the hands of various immigrants who carry it from Iowa to Texas, from Maine to Louisiana, looking for a decent life.
-
-
Just too depressing
- By Annette Grefe on 06-14-11
By: Annie Proulx
-
The Shipping News
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At 36, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman, is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife gets her just desserts. He retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As three generations of his family cobble up new lives, Quoyle confronts his private demons - and the unpredictable forces of nature and society - and begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery.
-
-
Can't Explain Why I Love This Book
- By Polly on 03-06-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
Close Range
- Wyoming Stories (Selected Unabridged Stories)
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Frances Fisher, Bruce Greenwood, Campbell Scott
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. In "The Mud Below", a rodeo rider's obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In "The Half-Skinned Steer", an elderly fool drives west to the ranch he grew up on for his brother's funeral, and dies a mile from home.
-
-
A Wonderfully Ironic and Surprising Read
- By Susan L. Stewart on 04-21-12
By: Annie Proulx
-
The Power of the Dog
- A Novel
- By: Thomas Savage, Annie Proulx - afterword
- Narrated by: Chad Michael Collins, Annie Proulx
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the wide-open spaces of the American West, The Power of the Dog is a stunning story of domestic tyranny, brutal masculinity, and thrilling defiance from one of the most powerful and distinctive voices in American literature. The novel tells the story of two brothers—one magnetic but cruel, the other gentle and quiet—and of the mother and son whose arrival on the brothers’ ranch shatters an already tenuous peace.
-
-
Abrupt Ending and Hard to Follow Story
- By Trevor on 09-08-21
By: Thomas Savage, and others
-
Bird Cloud
- A Memoir
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Joan Allen
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Bird Cloud” is the name Annie Proulx gave to 640 acres of Wyoming wetlands and prairie and 400-foot cliffs plunging down to the North Platte River. On the day she first visited, a cloud in the shape of a bird hung in the evening sky. Proulx also saw pelicans, bald eagles, golden eagles, great blue herons, ravens, scores of bluebirds, harriers, kestrels, elk, deer and a dozen antelope
-
-
Craft vs. History
- By Drinker on 06-20-11
By: Annie Proulx
-
Bride of New France
- A Novel
- By: Suzanne Desrochers
- Narrated by: Emma Bering
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Laure Beausejour has grown up in a dormitory in Paris surrounded by prostitutes, the insane, and other forgotten women. Despite numerous hardships, she dreams of using her needlework skills to become a seamstress and one day marry a nobleman. But in 1669, Laure's dreams are cruelly dashed when she is sent across the Atlantic to New France as a fille du roi. Powerful and haunting, Bride of New France is a remarkable tale of a French girl and her struggle to survive in a brutal time and place.
-
-
Hard life in a new land
- By Linda Leeks on 11-28-12
-
The Shipping News
- By: Annie Proulx
- Narrated by: Robert Joy
- Length: 5 hrs and 8 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, The Shipping News shows why E. Annie Proulx is recognized as a gifted and original writer. When Quoyle, a 36-year-old, third rate newspaperman, learns that his two-timing wife has abandoned him and their two daughters, he returns to his ancestral home on the Newfoundland coast, to rebuild his life. We also recommend Proulx's, Accordion Crimes.
-
-
Find the unabridged version!
- By Karen on 05-28-07
By: Annie Proulx
-
Properties of Thirst
- By: Marianne Wiggins
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill, Gabra Zackman
- Length: 19 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rockwell “Rocky” Rhodes has spent years fiercely protecting his California ranch from the LA Water Corporation. It is here where he and his beloved wife Lou raised their twins, Sunny and Stryker, and it is here where Rocky has mourned Lou in the years since her death. As Sunny and Stryker reach the cusp of adulthood, the country teeters on the brink of war. Stryker decides to join the fight, deploying to Pearl Harbor not long before the bombs strike. Soon, Rocky and his family find themselves facing yet another incomprehensible tragedy.
-
-
LOVED it!
- By Susan Flieder on 12-31-22
By: Marianne Wiggins
-
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
- By: Junot Diaz
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Staci Snell
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku: the curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim.
-
-
Wondrous Book!!!
- By Robert on 06-22-12
By: Junot Diaz
-
Caleb's Crossing
- A Novel
- By: Geraldine Brooks
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ehle
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1665, a young man from Martha's Vineyard became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. Upon this slender factual scaffold, Brooks has created a luminous tale of love and faith, magic and adventure. The narrator of Caleb's Crossing is Bethia Mayfield, growing up in the tiny settlement of Great Harbor amid a small band of pioneers and Puritans. Restless and curious, she yearns after an education that is closed to her by her sex....
-
-
Sadly, I can't go on listening.
- By Susan C. S. on 06-22-11
By: Geraldine Brooks
-
Milkman
- By: Anna Burns
- Narrated by: Bríd Brennan
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes "interesting" - the last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed, and to be noticed is dangerous. Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is a story of inaction with enormous consequences.
-
-
Like the writing, not the audio issues
- By Criticalthinker on 12-31-18
By: Anna Burns
-
The Vaster Wilds
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her.
-
-
Slow torture written too hastily
- By Jennifer on 09-23-23
By: Lauren Groff
-
The Gone World
- By: Tom Sweterlitsch
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shannon Moss is part of a clandestine division within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. In western Pennsylvania, 1997, she is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL's family - and to locate his vanished teenage daughter. Though she can't share the information with conventional law enforcement, Moss discovers that the missing SEAL was an astronaut aboard the spaceship USS Libra - a ship assumed lost to the currents of Deep Time. Moss knows firsthand the mental trauma of time travel and believes the SEAL's experience with the future has triggered this violence.
-
-
What an amazing find!
- By Veronica on 03-07-18
By: Tom Sweterlitsch
-
Flight Behavior
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 16 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dellarobia Turnbow is a restless farm wife who gave up her own plans when she accidentally became pregnant at 17. Now, after a decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, she encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley filled with what looks like a lake of fire. She can only understand it as a cautionary miracle, but it sparks a raft of other explanations from scientists, religious leaders, and the media.
-
-
A poignant literary work of art.
- By criswithcurls on 02-08-13
-
The Bean Trees
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: C. J. Critt
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity of putting down roots.
-
-
Barbara, can we have a "re-do?"
- By Nancy on 02-22-12
-
The Overstory
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fable that range from antebellum New York to the late 20th-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. An air force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits 100 years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light.
-
-
eye opening
- By Michael Stansberry on 05-23-18
By: Richard Powers
What listeners say about Barkskins
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- W Perry Hall
- 06-30-16
Awe-Inspiring, Far-Reaching Epic
An Awe-Inspiring, Far-Reaching Epic of the Descendants of 2 French Settlers in 1681 in New France (in an area now in Nova Scotia) and Their Destinies Over the Next 330 Years
I was thoroughly enthralled by this sweeping epic covering nearly 330 years. Although it's 736 pages, there's no one protagonist or any character that is fully developed. In fact, I believe it's difficult, if not impossible, to write an three-century epic like this that is very compelling or moving in the usual sense of literary fiction. That is to say, this is an epic that does not go back to one original narrator's storyline but instead travels straight through 320 years from 1681 to 2012 (no backward and forward except for explanation's sake) and thus does not lend itself to the reader's personal attachment to a character or a love affair, or to a development of either in the way that has become the custom for today's readers. Perhaps the only sure way to have such an attachment is if the author develops these ingredients, adding another 500-700 pages, in which case most won't read it. In any case, Proulx's obvious intent was to tell a story that shows her necessary truth about the land, the intermixing of families, and the biblical battle always present, here greed versus good (the former winning much more over the centuries than the latter).
I certainly appreciated the change from the typical literary structures, which tend to wear me out upon much accumulation, such as when it takes 30 pages to ponder a madeleine cake.
I loved seeing how much families change over time, how they blended, nearly ended, how one member of a generation can have a dramatic impact on the next gen but each member of a generation can be pegged into one of 2 general camps favoring 1) love of money and accumulation of wealth for the familly in the rich, and, in the poor, simply survival above all else, versus 2) love of others including future generations and, for the Indians, saving of their traditional ways, the land of their ancestors and the spirit of the land that they have revered and befriended.
I was dumbstruck by the destruction of the forests, their role in our environment and future, and the complete apathy of nearly all humans toward anything to do with the environment, either ignoring the current problems on the thought that it's all a myth, it's not my problem it will be their problem, or they are incapable of conceiving that it will one day be a huge problem for Earth.
I would definitely read this novel again. I gained a better appreciation for the outdoors, wildlife, forests and trees from reading this novel, as well as a somber realization of how so many people died over the past 300 years as a result of human greed, the billions made in the pillage and the plunder of forests in the United States, Canada, as well as in New Zealand, where a good 40-page chunk of the book was set.
Proulx is a great writer. This is the first book of hers I've read. I'd definitely recommend this for a worthwhile change of scenery in your summer reading.
In fact, I've talked myself into giving this 5 stars. 4.5 stars, realizing the above-stated negatives and positives of a 736 page book covering 320 years. Did Ms. Proulx accomplish what she set out to write and did it affect me? Absolutely yes on both counts. If I gave this 4, it would be due to the inability to fully develop characters/relationships that results from the ambitious scope of the book. Why can't a writer focus on the story more than any particular character? Who says? She did an excellent job in creating this realistic world over so many deaths and births, marriages, abandonments, murders, capsizes, betrayals, hope and hopelessness.
It deserves 5 stars.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
140 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Stephanie N. Johnson
- 05-23-18
Chapter 23
The end of chapter 23 is cut off! Let’s see how the rest of the book goes, but would be nice to know what happens at the end of this chapter.
Thanks!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
100 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- JKC
- 07-09-16
A bit like perusing the obituaries
“Barkskins” is one of those sprawling epics that extends across generations and continents and families, and it fails for the reason such epics commonly do: the sheer quantity of narration required to tell the story leaves little space in which to develop personalities, conflicts, emotional tension. Characters appear and disappear in rapid succession. I read their condensed stories with the detached indifference I feel when perusing obituary notices. Yes, here was a notable person; he or she led a fascinating life – but I didn’t really know them, so it is hard to feel any human empathy.
Someone has said that this is Proulx’s “Moby Dick”. Apparently, that person was daunted by the length of both books, and read neither. Melville started with a self-contained story and used it as a point of departure for ruminations about life, nature, technology, and ultimately, the conflict between civilization and nature. Proulx is so preoccupied with getting her story told that she has no space left for rumination. She leaves us with a few not-too-subtle slogans. She is too busy telling a story to write a novel.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
85 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ilana
- 06-19-16
The Forest for the Trees
Barkskins is a multi-generational saga, but the main character of the story is the forest—the ancient forests that covered the world and most of North America before the settlers arrived and decided they must conquer the forest as well as the native Indians who had been living in peaceful harmony with the ancient trees before the arrival of the colonizers. The story begins with two French settlers who have signed on as indentured servants to work in New France. They are the originators of two 'dynasties': the Sels, and the Dukes. The Dukes are descendent from Charles Duquet, who literally escapes from his obligations into the woods, and through years of travel and trading, and an eventual marriage to a wealthy Dutch woman, establishes a foresting company that will operate over several generations and be partly responsible for the clear-cutting and deforestation of North America and New Zealand, from the 17th through the 21st century. The Sels are descendants from René Sel, who is forced into a marriage with a native Micmac woman. He fathers mixed-heritage children, who are all faced with the problems plaguing the native Indians as the settlers methodically took away their lands and their rights, as they strive to keep their Micmac origins alive despite the overwhelming challenges and persecution they face.
By necessity, some of the characters weren't as fully developed as others, and I found the huge cast of characters quite daunting, though there is a helpful family tree provided as a pdf chart with the audiobook. I had to refer to this often, but eventually it ceased to be an issue as a handful of characters were fully developed and came to the fore, carrying the bulk of the story with them. Proulx clearly wanted to show how the white Colonialists, motivated by greed and hubris, systematically destroyed forest land which they assumed was endless and would continue to regenerate itself. Of course we now know otherwise and are suffering the consequences of events which Proulx makes clear originated from the very beginning of the discovery of the Americas by the Europeans.
I very much wanted to love this story, but found it somewhat overwhelming at times, and the environmental message, while it is one I think is important to keep in mind, seemed overbearing at times, if not always explicitly stated. The word 'Barkskins' is an invention by Proulx, who says in an NPR interview that she's not entirely sure where the word originated, admitting she might have coined it herself, and that (her novel) "was Barkskins before even the first word was written." (http://www.npr.org/2016/06/10/481449357/annie-proulx-s-bloody-new-novel-barkskins-is-about-more-than-deforestation)
The narrator handled the various accents very well, and his overall performance is definitely recommended.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
69 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- RIchard Lombard
- 09-23-16
Educational
The book is very long and detailed with so many characters to follow that you only get a brief impression of each one. The material feels a little dry at times, almost like a beautifully written history textbook. I did enjoy it and kept coming back to it for the beauty of the language and the historical perspective it gave me. So many small details of everyday life in America.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
65 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jake Eldrich
- 03-15-18
Long and goes nowhere.
What disappointed you about Barkskins?
Too many characters that drop off and are not well integrated into the story. The book leaves a bad taste regarding "white man", progress, and the future of the planet. No positive message. White Europeans destroyed North America (and cut down all the trees)?
Any additional comments?
Got this because my wife was reading (she could not finish). Although I finished neither of us care for this depressing book. Little redeeming qualities.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
50 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amy
- 10-01-16
What an amazing story!
I was impressed with the extensive detail regarding the Native Americans and the lumber industry. The things that I learned from this book will stay with me for a very long time.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
30 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mel
- 08-02-16
God bless the far-sighted environmentalist
If there has been any wonder as to what Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Proulx has been up to for the 14 yrs. since her last novel, it's now clear...researching our forests. With this latest novel, Barkskins, Proulx begins in the 17th century forests of Canada with two Frenchmen, indentured servants, awestruck by the vast forested wilderness they see upon stepping onto this North American continent: the brawny woodsman René Sel, and Charles Duquet, “a weakling from the Paris slums.” Thus begins the eradication of the towering forests and its native inhabitants, the (Mi'kmaw). At 700 pages, this door stop of a book spans three centuries that trace the descendants of the two Frenchmen, and the consequences of their chosen paths in this new world.
Through the Revolutionary War, The Civil War, the expansion of an industrialized nation, immigration, and eventually the decline of the Mi’Kmaq Indian culture, greed flows through the generations, expanding across oceans in the search for more lumber. While immigrants clear unfathomable acreage of timber to build homesteads and plant corn, the timber barons begin importing newly found wood from the forests in China and New Zealand, expanding their empires without a thought to re-forestation. The respect and the dependence the Mi’Kmaq have for the nature of the forests is an unheeded warning for the loggers. As the forests are depleted the Mi’Kmaq also fall to illness and lassitude. Only a far-sighted visionary with a love for the trees and nature realizes the need to begin researching reforestation.
The profusion of characters that inhabit these 300 years are many, but are meaningful and memorable participants in creating the eventful history laid out so colorfully by the author. The stories they contribute become the family legends; ancestoral bonds; the shoulders that future characters will stand upon. Duke's (Duquet) expensive wig purchased in Europe and proudly worn in spite of it's weight, is years later flung from the attic's stash of historical treasures by a band of exploring children mistaking it for some creature. I could picture this trip through history and time, see the relevance and the impact of inventions, from the radial saw to pre-fab homes -- Proulx details centuries of logging, and the modernization of the country on every level. It is an amazing compendium of the development of our nation.
It is almost unfair to give such an accomplishment 4*'s, (any writer that can keep me reading about logging for 26 hours really deserves 5*'s) but it moves through time with little significance given to the events apart from logging. It's like a line chart with a straight Y axis moving through incredible spikes that I'd like to have seen reflected in the story -- but then that would be more pages...more trees. Keeping your head straight ahead, eyes on the page, while the tea is tossed into the harbor, the colonists battle the British, or slavery is abolished, and so on -- it's difficult even for a tree-hugger to stay focused on hours of logging and not to do some mind-wandering. I did best devoting shorter periods of time to this; it's easy to pick up and still be in the story. Significant, interesting read. I can see Ken Burns developing this into one of his series; recommend for lovers of history, good stories, distinct characters, and strong narratives.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
27 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Richard Joers
- 09-28-16
Man's arrogance and self-absorption
Man has a dramatic impact on the environment. It's a long-term issue that unfortunately needs a very long time to resolve. Barkskins takes its time to lay out the cruel destruction, where even the well intentioned can cause great harm. Decision by decision man is seen solely focusing on their own needs, desires, and aspiration all while failing to understand the interconnectedness of all matter that is this earth. This book brings you along man's journey to first master and then destroy all that is loved.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
19 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kristi
- 06-29-16
Writing (check) | Narration (check) - go for it!
I loved this book for 2 reasons:
1) Annie Proulx is a master at describing things so vividly, so susinctly that you are swept away with the imagery...and wonder how you never saw it that way before.
2) Narration by Petkoff was a.m.a.z.i.n.g! He magically captures the voices of an international cast over centuries and hands them to the listener with ease.
As a side note, I consider(ed) myself educated and progressive having grown up in the Pacific Northwest participating in conservation efforts and growing up with Reservations in my back yard. However, I appreciated Annie's ability to show me the thinking I take forgranted when it comes to natural resources. I walked away with more understanding surrounding First Nations/Native American oppression. I wish I could say that part felt good - but it really smacked me in the face and I felt convicted to learn more and do more.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
15 people found this helpful