Valentine

A Novel

By: Elizabeth Wetmore

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Jenna Lamia

Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club pick!

Written with the haunting emotional power of Elizabeth Strout and Barbara Kingsolver, an astonishing debut novel that explores the lingering effects of a brutal crime on the women of one small Texas oil town in the 1970s.

Mercy is hard in a place like this....

It’s February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom. While the town’s men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems to follow.

In the early hours of the morning after Valentine’s Day, 14-year-old Gloria Ramírez appears on the front porch of Mary Rose Whitehead’s ranch house, broken and barely alive. The teenager had been viciously attacked in a nearby oil field - an act of brutality that is tried in the churches and barrooms of Odessa before it can reach a court of law. When justice is evasive, the stage is set for a showdown with potentially devastating consequences.

Valentine is a haunting exploration of the intersections of violence and race, class, and region in a story that plumbs the depths of darkness and fear, yet offers a window into beauty and hope. Told through the alternating points of view of indelible characters who burrow deep in the listener’s heart, this fierce, unflinching, and surprisingly tender novel illuminates women’s strength and vulnerability, and reminds us that it is the stories we tell ourselves that keep us alive.

©2020 Elizabeth Wetmore (P)2020 HarperAudio

Hour after hour of sadness

This book begins with a horrifying episode. I kept reading thinking it would become more hopeful. But like life in the oil fields of Texas in the early days, it just piles on sadness after sadness. It’s very well written and no doubt a true representation of the life and times.

Gripping!

I felt like I was transformed to west Texas each time I listened! Amazing voice performances!!

Barren bigotry

Gripping story of a rape of a young Latina and how it affects her, the woman whose house she goes to and all of the women who come in contact with that woman. Pretty descriptions of the land and not so pretty descriptions of the bigoted men and women who inhabit the oil fields of Texas. The harsh life drives women to some desperate ends.

Texas

I’m from Georgia and don’t know much about but have a good idea now about the landscape and culture of the oil field community.

Great story but...

Great story absolutely love it! I love the history of West Texas is entwined in the book.

But I wish the women reading it knew how to pronounce the names of all the West Texas towns. Hearing Pecos said that way can really drive you nuts.

Valentine

An enjoyable read that makes you feel as though are in the miserable Texas weather. The book shows the readers what life is like for the poor Mexicans.

Mispronunciations

While I enjoyed the narrator most of the time, the blatant mispronunciations were so distracting to the story. No one in Texas pronounces pecan or Pecos with a long ‘e’. Occasionally, she also mispronounced ‘mesquite’. If the story is supposed to be set in Texas, then pronounce the words as they do in Texas!

Stereotypical

Over the top with assumptions about people and the Mindset of west Texas oil town. Also the author does not know or has worked with cattle or she would not refer to them as stupid animals. I finished the book basically to observe how many more things about Texas would the author mis represent. You can find the prejudice she is describing in any neighborhood in America, possibly in her own house.

Extremely well done

Reminiscent of Olive Kitteridge but brilliantly its own. Almost an historical novel is West Texas .

Narration not authentic

If you aren’t going to have a book set in West Texas narrated by a southerner, you should make sure local words and phrases are pronounced correctly. Lack of authenticity of the narrator really affected the experience of the novel.