Through the Groves

A Memoir

By: Anne Hull

Narrated by: Anne Hull

Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

This program is read by the author.

“Anne Hull has written some of the most important stories of our time, beautifully, unflinchingly.”—Rick Bragg

"Hull delivers her book with a gentle twang and the unpretentious tone of someone who has lived the experiences she describes. Through her character work and emotionally intelligent delivery, Hull helps the listener feel her every bump, bruise, and triumph."—AudioFile

A richly evocative coming-of-age memoir set in the Florida orange groves of the 1960s by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

Anne Hull grew up in rural Central Florida, barefoot half the time and running through the orange groves her father’s family had worked for generations. The ground trembled from the vibrations of bulldozers and jackhammers clearing land for Walt Disney World. “Look now,” her father told her as they rode through the mossy landscape together. “It will all be gone.” But the real threat was at home, where Hull was pulled between her idealistic but self-destructive father and her mother, a glamorous outsider from Brooklyn struggling with her own aspirations. All the while, Hull felt the pressures of girlhood closing in. She dreamed of becoming a traveling salesman who ate in motel coffee shops, accompanied by her baton-twirling babysitter. As her sexual identity took shape, Hull knew the place she loved would never love her back and began plotting her escape.

Here, Hull captures it all—the smells and sounds of a disappearing way of life, the secret rituals and rhythms of a doomed family, the casual racism of the rural South in the 1960s, and the suffocating expectations placed on girls and women.

Vividly atmospheric and haunting, Through the Groves will speak to anyone who’s ever left home to cut a path of their own.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

©2022 Anne Hull (P)2022 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“This warmly evocative recollection of [Hull's] formative years will appeal to a wide audience, especially those who enjoy understated, stylishly well-told stories....a funny, candid, and authentic memoir.”—Kirkus

“[An] entrancing coming-out and coming-of-age memoir...[Hull] paints a masterful, full-fleshed portrait of the Florida of her youth...this is a stirring account of growing up at odds with one’s environment and making it out on the other side.”—Publishers Weekly

“Honest, tender, wistful, Through The Groves is a clear-eyed evocation of a very particular time and place and people. It’s also a gut-punch of a story about a childhood filled with uncertainty, questions, longing. This feels like the book Anne Hull has been wanting to write, needing to write, and also maybe the book she felt a little afraid to write, which are the perfect conditions for a heart-rending memoir. I’ve long admired Hull as a journalist, but I turned the last page feeling she was a friend.”—J. R. Moehringer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Tender Bar

Beautifully Written Coming-of-Age Memoir

Engrossing Coming of Age memoir set in the Florida orange groves of the 1960s. Saturated with the hard work and sweet aroma of orange blossoms and the hard work it takes to grow them. Read by the Pulitzer prize winning author, I found the story to be greatly relatable and nostalgic, beautifully told, yet does not shy away from any family shadowlands.

Vivid story of a Florida long gone

I totally enjoyed this audio book and the author’s narration is excellent. I also had a free-range childhood and although very different from hers, I loved hearing her stories. She was such an observant and resilient child through many family ups and downs, often able to adapt and find the good in the family’s changing fortunes. The Florida atmosphere of the 1960s is beautifully described throughout. I finished it today and was sorry to have it end. It’s heartfelt, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, always interesting.

Excellent coming of age in the Deep South memoir

Great narration & such evocative memories of growing up in the 60s & 70s. Highly recommend. Great book.

An illuminating read

Loved this wonderful memoir by Anne Hull, longtime reporter for the Washington Post, on her childhood & adolescence in central Florida from the 50s to the early 70s. It’s an exquisitely written personal story, and an historical account of life in there before Disney and the Florida boom. She lays out the cultural foundations of the place, including the intrinsic racism, wonderfully describes the wild landscape and the unique characters that populated it. An illuminating read!

This was the Florida I knew

Having grown up in Orlando before Disney with a father who had Orange Groves in Lake County, worked for the Ortho division of Chevron Chemical, and who also grew up in Plant City…I feel like I should have known Anne Hull! The journalist she mentions, Panky Snow, was my moth er’s best friend growing up. What a trip down memory lane! As a 7th generation Floridian, I so appreciate her preserving the memory of the Florida we knew.

LOVED listening to this book

Great story.. hilarious at some points. Really fun to listen to…. Just great story telling all the way through. Fun listen