Belonging

De: Jill Fordyce

Narrado por: Cassandra Campbell

Belonging is a story about the events that transform our lives: the innocence and heartache of your first love, the confusion and sadness of a cherished friendship slipping away, the way we are all shaped by the places we come from, and the fierce desire to make a family when your own family has failed.

Jenny is thirteen when an epic dust storm rolls into her central California town in December 1977. Bedridden after contracting a life-threatening illness in the storm and suffering a shocking loss, Jenny realizes she will never be cared for by the mother who both neglects and terrifies her or the father who allows it. She relies on her cousin, Heather, who has the loving home Jenny longs for; her beloved great-uncle, Gino, the last link between generations; her best friend, Henry, a free spirit with whom she shares an inexplicable bond; and earnest baseball star, Billy, who becomes her first love. After a stunning turn of events in both their lives, Jenny and Henry leave for college in LA together in the summer of 1982—Jenny fleeing a broken heart, and Henry running from something he can’t reveal, even to his best friend. When she returns home years later, the life Jenny so carefully created collides with the one she left behind.

Spanning three decades, Belonging is about first love and heartbreak, friendship and secrets, family and forgiveness, hometowns and coming of age, and memory and music. The heart of the story is Jenny’s struggle to undo the binds of a childhood that have deeply affected her life, the painful path to love endured by children raised in alcoholic families, and the grim reality of believing you must hide a part of yourself in order to belong.

©2024 Jill Fordyce (P)2024 Recorded Books

Beautiful story

What a wonderful story of coming of age in a small town in California. Truly enjoyed this book!

Great sensitive and insightful story.

The author has such great insights into youth, relationships and the development of a sensitive women.

Amazing!

This book is AMAZING! I can’t stop listening! You feel so close to Jenny the main character! Your heart is happy when she is happy and your heart breaks when hers does too! I love the descriptions of different time periods and places in different parts of California, especially Bakersfield..it’s such a warm heartfelt coming of age story! I will be sad when I done!! The best!

Sweet book, but very repetitive

The beginning of the book was great. However, in the second half, the sensory detail and reviewing of the main character’s memories, all of which the reader saw in the first half, drowned the plot. I did like the fact that the author clearly loves Bakersfield. It’s nice to read a book not set in New England, New York, or a West Coast metropolis.