NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Hidden desires, long-held secrets, and the sacrifices people make for family are at the heart of this powerful first novel by the popular Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist.“A moving, unforgettable story about time, progress, and how the mistakes of one generation get repeated or repaired by the next.”—J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of Saints … Times bestselling author of Saints for All Occasions
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND NEW YORK POST
1957, Clayton Valley, Ohio. Ellie has the best grades in her class. Her dream is to go to nursing school and marry Brick McGinty. A basketball star, Brick has the chance to escape his abusive father and become the first person in his blue-collar family to attend college. But when Ellie learns that she is pregnant, everything changes. Just as Brick and Ellie revise their plans and build a family, a knock on the front door threatens to destroy their lives.
The evolution of women’s lives spanning the second half of the twentieth century is at the center of this beautiful novel that richly portrays how much people know—and pretend not to know—about the secrets at the heart of a town, and a family.
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A one-sitting read–gorgeous writing, an old-fashioned page turner about a still painfully relevant topic. Readers at every level will relate. I had to buy my mom her own copy so I wouldn’t’ have to arm wrestle her for first dibs.
I was thrilled to get an advanced copy of Schultz’s upcoming first novel. I read it–yes, all 500 pages of it–in one day, so anxious was I to know the fate of three generations of the McGintys of Ohio. Schultz portrays the failures and triumphs and struggles and hurts of the white working class in a small Midwestern town with gimlet-eyed compassion and tenderness. Erietown is a place of human failure, family abuse and broken-down men and women. They lie, they cheat, they seethe with class resentment, they break the hearts of those who love them. But they also love and protect their own, they have moments of utter grace and sacrifice, and occasionally, some of them transcend their circumstances. Like in a Springsteen landscape, there are no saints here in Erietown and no sinners–just achingly flawed humans doing their best to get through each hardworking day. So much of the reporting about the white working class has been either patronizing or valorizing. Somehow, Schultz gets it just right. The result is a book for our time.
This beautifully-written book follows the lives of a group of women whose stories are not often told in current fiction. They are neither the stuff of romance novels nor celebrities but the mothers, wives and daughters of working class men in the 1950s and beyond. Because their circumstances did not offer them the opportunity to pursue their dreams they often seemed not to have ever had ambitions beyond being wives and mothers but Schulz proves that to be a superficial analysis of their lives. She does an excellent job of chronicling the changing mores of the 60s and the profound resistance against change by the older generations. We come to know these women as strong and loving in many large and small ways as they face the many harsh realities of their circumscribed lives. It is a book well worth reading.
DNF. For me, nothing about the characters was compelling enough to continue reading.
Having lived in a big town, these characters seemed very real to me. The story had lots of twists and turns but the ending was satisfying. I recommend this one heartily.
I enjoyed reading it.
I could stop listening to it. It was long but easy to enjoy.
I have reached an age where I have trouble sticking with a story however, the girls grabbed my attention and I recommend it. I was so involved with the characters that I had to stop reading for a day when one girl got pregnant. This wasn’t what I wanted for her.
Connie Schultz has long been one of the great chroniclers of the American Dream, telling the true stories of everyday men and women with compassion, heart, wit, and wisdom. Her powerful debut novel contains all that, plus the essential magic that only fiction can provide. Schultz offers up a deep exploration of the inner lives of one family. Their hopes, desires, and heartaches blaze forth on every page.
Connie Schultz’s The Daughters of Erietown is a quiet force of a novel. It crept up on me, much the same way that time creeps up on these characters. I was struck by how well Schultz portrays a full life—childhood to old age—and all the small moments that shape us, for better or for worse. Its ambitious scope will leave readers wanting to curl up with it until they’ve finished.
This is a big, deep, warm, and moving story of unforgettable women who make and shape their families. With the eye and ear of a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the insight and language of a born storyteller, Schultz immerses us in The Daughters of Erietown, from love to loss and back.
In the 1950’s Ellie is a straight-A student in high school and is dating the star basketball player. She starts dreaming of becoming a nurse, so she can help others. Brick, her first love, has the chance to go to college on a basketball scholarship and escape his abusive father. Their dreams shatter when Ellie discovers she is pregnant.
This tenderly written book follows Ellie and Brick through 34 years from 1944 until 1978. It also follows changing norms in society during those years. We watch how women’s roles changed. We also see how racism changed too. We watch events in history through the eyes of these painfully realistic characters.
This is a wonderful book, and I had a hard time putting it down, as I followed Ellie and Brick through their many ups and downs, raised a family, and watched their children grow up and leave. It was fun to relive historical events and to watch how things in the world changed.
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.
Set in mid-Twentieth-Century northeastern Ohio, what is now the Rustbelt, this story is a must read! Great characters, emotionally satisfying and heart-rending realism, not to be missed.