The Lives of Edie Pritchard

By: Larry Watson

Narrated by: Holly Palance

Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

Edie - smart, self-assured, beautiful - always worked hard. She worked as a teller at a bank, she worked to save her first marriage, and later, she worked to raise her daughter even as her second marriage came apart. Really, Edie just wanted a good life, but everywhere she turned, her looks defined her. Two brothers fought over her. Her second husband became unreasonably possessive and jealous. Her daughter resented her. And now, as a grandmother, Edie finds herself harassed by a younger man. It’s been a lifetime of proving that she is allowed to exist in her own sphere. The Lives of Edie Pritchard tells the story of one woman just trying to be herself, even as multiple men attempt to categorize and own her.

©2020 Larry Watson (P)2020 Dreamscape Media, LLC

A story for our times

An empowering story a woman's journey to find herself. I think every woman can relate to at least some part of Edie's experiences.
Holly Palance's narration expertly brings us through the winding path of Edie's life from a young, sexual object to the older, mature Edie who owns who she is.
Beautifully written (I want to visit Montana!) and movingly performed.

Written and narrated for Baby Boomers

While the story was mostly well written, it was heavy on romanticism for the '50s and '60s, and that section was probably the most interesting part. When it reached the section set in 2007, it was clear the author was less comfortable. The teenage/young adult characters were depicted as one-dimensional and frankly stupid. Their dialogue was painful to hear read by a 60-year-old plus narrator. I was driven nearly insane in one final section of the book, which is set in 2007, where the two older characters drive for hours looking for the 18-year-old granddaughter. The reader was meant to feel tension that they won't get to her in time, but at no point do they try calling or texting her, despite the fact that it's already been established that they have communication by cell phone. They spend hours looking for a certain street without ever looking on a nav system for it. The author could have just said there was no service or something to address this gap but instead I was completely distracted by the fact that they had not used the tools at their disposal to locate the girl.

I am 50 years old, so not a young person myself. I felt the author displayed a lack of understanding for the present. I might recommend this to someone 70+ who would not be so distracted by these things. I chose to listen to it because of a review on NPR that said it was a great book for capturing the depth of an older woman, and maybe I should have read between the lines.

A Great Listen

As a fan of Larry Watson's, Let Him Go, I was looking forward to this one. Wasn't disappointed. I'm a third-generation Wyoming native who knows eastern Montana well. This is the real deal. I thought Holly Palance's narration was on the mark. Certainly not Southern. For me, story and narrator were a perfect match.

Wonderful!

A good listen, authentic and moving…it’s long but I stayed with it & I’m glad I did…Edie goes through a lot with men who don’t deserve her….but she’s a survivor and finally figures it out
Holly Palance has a wonderful voice and did a really good job with the pacing and bringing Edie to life….

Few Southern accents in MT

The reader did a fine job reading this but her Southern accent was annoying and inauthentic. Larry Watson is so faithful to the settings of his stories...I think Dreamscapes let him down.