Flood

A Novel

De: Melissa Scholes Young

Narrado por: Hallie Ricardo

A sparkling debut set in Mark Twain's boyhood town, Flood is a story of what it means to be lost . . . and found.

Laura Brooks fled her hometown of Hannibal, Missouri, ten years ago after a historic flood and personal heartbreak. Now she's returned unannounced, and her family and friends don't know what to make of it. She says she's just home for a brief visit and her high-school reunion, but she's carrying too much luggage for that: literal and metaphorical. Soon Laura is embroiled in small-town affairs -- the contentious divorce of her rowdy best friend Rose; the campaign of her twelve-year-old godson, Bobby, to become the town's official Tom Sawyer; and the renewed interest of the man Laura once thought she'd marry, Sammy McGuire.

Leaving town when she was eighteen had been Laura's only option. She feared a stifling existence in a town ruled by its past, its mythological devotion to Mark Twain, and the economic and racial divide that runs as deep as the Mississippi River. She can't forget that fateful Fourth of July when the levees broke or the decisions that still haunt her. Now as the Mississippi rises again, a deep wound threatens to reopen, and Laura must decide if running away once more might be the best way to save herself.

Reseñas de la Crítica

Melissa Scholes Young is immensely talented. Her eye is clear and her powers are on high. I read Flood with admiration and growing excitement. I so strongly recommend her. Read her, now!—Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Into the Beautiful North and The Water Museum

Melissa Scholes Young's first novel delivers two unforgettable characters: the exhausted but not down-for-the-count Laura Brooks running back to her hometown of Hannibal, Missouri and the Mississippi River - both looking to climb out of their confines and willing to become displaced in the process. Fans of Mark Twain's beloved work will recognize Flood's conflicted characters and endearing contradictions. Like Twain, Laura Brooks tells the truth, mainly...—Dr. Cindy Lovell, Executive Director, Mark Twain House & Museum

Melissa Scholes Young knows how to tell a story, one that captivates and charms. She also knows the land and the heart's attachment to it. Flood is a novel about coming home, which in this case, is Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi River, the land of Mark Twain and his unforgettable characters, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. This novel's take on the question of whether to 'light out for the territory' is a wonderful read, one that will make you think about what it means to call a place home.—Lee Martin, author of The Bright Forever and Late One Night

Flood is a beautifully written novel that explores perennial questions of identity and belonging. I say perennial not because the novel beats a well-worth path, but because these questions are existential and urgent. Scholes Young is a thoughtful realist who creates a rich fictive dream without sacrificing character and voice. In Flood, she avoids the pitfalls of rural caricature by refusing the hyperbolic dialect and false cadences common in contemporary fiction that privileges place. Her characters come to life through patient accumulation not grotesque gesture. The prose is sharp, full of momentum, and yet restrained. There is no false nostalgia here, only complexity.—Stephanie Grant, author of The Passion of Alice and Map of Ireland

Melissa Scholes Young's debut novel Flood bubbles up from the home ground of Mark Twain. Those storied banks of the Mississippi crest anew with all the humor and hunger of Hannibal's current haves and have-nots-and this time it's women in the leading roles, YAY! The self-exiled Laura Brooks is running retrograde, returning home to tightrope walk a personal levee of luggage and love among family and friends. Down here the water's thick as the blood, and Flood's pages will swell and rush over you with their deep yearnings. This is fertile ground indeed, and Miss Scholes Young is brimming with Twain's loam and legacy.—Marc Nieson, author of Schoolhouse: Lessons on Love and Landscape

Great story in an interesting setting.

Great story with well developed characters wrapped in America's hometown. the author blends the narrative and the Mark Twin legend beautifully.

Worth the money and thw time.

Terrible narration

The mispronouncing of so many places and the negative accents and the way the reader makes the characters seem uneducated destroys the story for me. I felt it was belittling.

Strikingly superb narrator, engrossing characters

The narrator uses an urgently defensive and searching tone for the lead character's voice and captures subtle accent changes as well as personalities among all of the characters. Definitely one of the best narrators I've heard.

The plot is intriguing but Laura's observations really carry the book. She's clear-eyed about her own dilemmas, and she's had to be her own moral center. The desperation of poverty and helplessness -- especially, as represented by the levees, which literally hold together the lands and lives of the disadvantaged people of Laura's home town. Lands bought recently by corporations have strong protections against the floods, while the quality of the levees on family farms leaves those people at risk even from their own neighbors -- because if someone else's levee fails, your land is likely safer. The sharp social and economic divide between the well-off and the have-nots is etched with a matter-of-fact resignation.

I did become annoyed with Rose, Laura's conscience-free best friend, and kept wondering when Laura would quit letting Rose walk all over her . . . ditto her brother, Trey. The hometown boyfriend, Sammy, does seem a bit too good to be true. All of this was redeemed by the honest dialogue and uncompromising genuineness of their reaction to their life circumstances.
Other characters, so real it was spooky, were captivating: the boy Bobby, Laura's aunt and Laura's mother for sure.

I look forward to hearing another book by this author, and by this narrator.