Things Past Telling: A Novel

· HarperCollins
5.0
2条评价
电子书
352
符合条件
评分和评价未经验证  了解详情

关于此电子书

“This is a truly character-driven novel that explores how people define themselves, the creation of family and home, and the importance of memory and language. . . . Fans of historical epics won’t be able to put this book down.”—Historical Novel Society

“Emotionally satisfying. . . . A remarkable character portrait.”—Publishers Weekly

The author of The Secret Women tells the story of a brave and enduring woman as indomitable as Ernest Gaines’ legendary Miss Jane Pittman, in a breathtaking novel that combines the epic romance and adventure of Outlander, the sweeping drama of Roots, and the haunting historical power of Barracoon.

Things Past Telling is a remarkable historical epic that charts one unforgettable woman’s journey across an ocean of years as vast as the Atlantic that will forever separate her from her homeland. 

Born in West Africa in the mid-eighteenth century, Maryam Prescilla Grace—a.k.a “Momma Grace” will live a long, wondrous life marked by hardship, oppression, opportunity, and love. Though she will be “gifted” various names, her birth name is known to her alone. Over the course of 100-plus years, she survives capture, enslavement by several property owners, the Atlantic crossing when she is only eleven years of age, and a brief stint as a pirate’s ward, acting as both a spy and a translator. 

Maryam learns midwifery from a Caribbean-born wise woman, whose “craft” combines curated techniques and medicines from African, Indigenous, and European women. Those midwifery skills allow her to sometimes transcend the racial and class barriers of her enslavement, as she walks the razor’s edge trying to balance the lives and health of her own people with the cruel economic mandates of the slave holders, who view infants born in bondage not as flesh-and-blood children but as investment property. 

Throughout her triumphant and tumultuous life Maryam gains and loses her homeland, her family, her culture, her husband, her lovers, and her children. Yet as the decades pass, this tenacious woman never loses her sense of self.  

Inspired by a 112-year-old woman the author discovered in an 1870 U.S. Federal census report for Ohio, loosely based on the author’s real-life female ancestors, spanning more than a hundred years, from the mid-eighteen-century to the end of America’s Civil War, and spanning across the globe, from what is now southern Nigeria to the islands of the Caribbean to North America and the land bordering the Ohio River, Things Past Telling is a breathtaking story of a past that lives on in all of us, and a life that encompasses the best—and worst—of our humanity.

评分和评价

5.0
2条评价

作者简介

Sheila Williams is the author of seven novels, including Things Past Telling, The Secret Women, and Dancing on the Edge of the Roof, which was adapted for the Netflix film Juanita. In addition to her published works, she is the librettist for Fierce, an opera commissioned by the Cincinnati Opera. Sheila lives in northern Kentucky.

为此电子书评分

欢迎向我们提供反馈意见。

如何阅读

智能手机和平板电脑
只要安装 AndroidiPad/iPhone 版的 Google Play 图书应用,不仅应用内容会自动与您的账号同步,还能让您随时随地在线或离线阅览图书。
笔记本电脑和台式机
您可以使用计算机的网络浏览器聆听您在 Google Play 购买的有声读物。
电子阅读器和其他设备
如果要在 Kobo 电子阅读器等电子墨水屏设备上阅读,您需要下载一个文件,并将其传输到相应设备上。若要将文件传输到受支持的电子阅读器上,请按帮助中心内的详细说明操作。