An instant New York Times BestsellerA Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!
“A thrilling debut that deserves your attention.” –Ron Charles, the Washington Post
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, longlisted … explores the lingering effects of a brutal crime on the women of one small Texas oil town in the 1970s, longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the VCU Cabell First Novel Award.
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, fourteen-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 reader’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.
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It is nearly impossible for me to believe that Elizabeth Wetmore is a first-time novelist. How can a writer burst out of the gate with this much firepower and skill? VALENTINE is brilliant, sharp, tightly wound, and devastating. Wetmore has ripped the brutal, epic landscape of West Texas out of the hands of men, and has handed the stories over (finally!) to the girls and women who have always suffered, survived, and made their mark in such a hostile world. These are some of the most fully realized and unforgettable female characters I’ve ever met. They will stay with me.
Fierce and complex, VALENTINE is a novel of moral urgency and breathtaking prose. This is the very definition of a stunning debut.
Wow, I am unsure of what to say, or where to go. This is another BRILLIANT debut novel that has floored me. That has made me unsure of what to say.
1976, Odessa, Texas, a young Mexican girl is brutally raped. Her attacker is sacrosanct among the populous, because… he is male, he is young, he is an athlete, he is known, he is WHITE, he is a victim??… And she is, a Mexican, poor, pretty, a woman, and…no one.
While the author does occasionally paint beautiful pictures of west Texas, I cannot imagine it as any place I would ever want to live. I only see Odessa and West Texas as a place to run from; a place to try to piece together in your memory. Ms Wetmore lives in Chicago, and I would love to sit down with her and discuss her trajectory for this book. In some ways she is reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy in modern times, describing a Texas that sits somewhere between yes and what.
This is a truly thought-provoking work, that makes me question my white privilege and maleness.
I look forward to much more from this brilliant pen!!
My goodness, what a novel. I clutched this book in both hands and by the end I could feel the dust of West Texas on my skin. Elizabeth Wetmore understands the nuances of the human heart better than almost any writer I’ve read in recent years, and I rooted for these women with everything I have. There is violence here, and despair, but in the end the story is a testament to quiet courage, to hope, to love. Every person should read this extraordinary debut.
Valentine begins on February 14, 1976 when a fourteen-year-old Mexican girl, Gloria, is picked up at a drive-in by an oil field worker, Dale Strickland. He carries her off to an oil field and brutally rapes and beats her.
This is a dark look at an oil boom in a town only twenty-two miles from where I grew up. Valentine is told in multiple points of view, all women, who are affected directly or indirectly by the aftermath of this rape. The premise is heavy. The seventies are the times of change in the United States and in Texas with the Vietnam war, draft dodgers, women’s lib, and the ever-present misogyny against women and bigotry against persons of color, particularly Mexicans. Valentine looks at the short-term impact of this crime on the women of Odessa, Texas.
Odessa is a white man’s town. Men die in accidents: in the oil field accidents, ranching, or in on instance, a suicide listed on the death certificate as a “hunting accident.” Women, though, die at men’s hands. My own ancestors, the women in particular, had an inner strength and endured despite deep misogyny. While dwelling on wide-open plains, their lives were limited to becoming wives and mothers, not necessarily in that order. Lucky women escaped to the big cities of Texas such as Dallas or even the worlds beyond. Though I count myself lucky to be one of those who escaped, the austere beauty of the Texas plains still calls to me.
The writing is poetic and authentic. The writer does an incredible job capturing the “lingo” with relying on what John Dufresne, In The Lie That Tells a Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction call “eye dialect,” those bizarre spellings and dropped g’s as in tellin’ a story. The dialogue is rendered by syntax, diction, idioms, and figures of speech, and by what Dufresne calls “the vocabulary indigenous to the locale” rather than in aberrant spellings. Being from the area, I can attest to that. The images of the flat plains of the Llano Estacado and the whistle of the wind through tumbleweeds is breath-taking.
Valentine is a character-drive, heartbreaking exploration of injustice written in poignant, beautiful, rich prose.
One of my favorites book of 2020 so far!
This is a wise novel, full of the moments of ordinary women’s lives, and what it takes to survive a harsh environment. Excellent setting.
Valentine is a story of women both hiding from and fighting back against masculine brutality, and of Mexicans dealing with American bigotry in a West Texan blackwater oil town in the 70s.
What stands out in this wonderful novel is the spectacular writing–the use of apt detail, fresh language, sharp observation of the landscape and culture of West Texas and of human emotion. I am reminded a bit of Julia Philips’ Disappearing Earth and also of Richard Powers’ The Overstory in that a number of the chapters could stand alone brilliantly as short stories, they are that successful in depicting the inner and outer life of a character. The author threads the novel together by the characters’ loosely connected lives, particularly using the opening and closing chapters to tie it into a satisfying, unified whole.
Here is a small sample of the writing: (This is from the point of view of Glory a fourteen year old Mexican girl, who was the victim of a brutal crime. It takes place quite a bit after that occurred; she is with her uncle now, and their truck has broken down.)
“Glory climbs onto the bed of the El Camino and stands up to face the big bunch of nothing that surrounds them on all sides. They haven’t seen a pumpjack since Ozona, and there are no buildings out here, not even a little farmhouse in the distance. The only signs that people have ever been here is the barbed-wire fence that runs along the highway for as far as she can see, and an open gate about fifty yards away. This is different, she tells herself when her heart starts hammering against her sternum. Out there in the oil patch, the earth was an empty table. here the land is rocky and uneven in some places, flat and bald and red-faced in others.”
The depictions of the inner and outer lives of the women, the Mexican experience, and the oil town culture feel authentic, earned, and entirely credible. One wonders how much has changed since the 70s. Wetmore’s mastery of craft–language and structure–shines throughout the novel. I wholeheartedly recommend this extraordinary work.
This stunning novel by Elizabeth Wetmore, with its gritty plot and strong female characters, highlights more than the plight of women who live and work in the oil field country of Texas during the oil booms and hard times of the eighties. It speaks beautifully, sometimes harshly and in graphic detail, to the plight of women trapped in a cycle of poverty in any time.
Truly enjoyed this novel. Like the author, I too am originally from West Texas. It brought up a lot of memories. The characters are well written and versed. Sadly, the theme was accurate as well.
Strong character representations …. cut to the bone. Depressing, no up-lifting characterizations, gripping, hoping for redemption that never comes
A sad but compelling story populated with women teetering on the edge. The landscape is as much a character as the people. Pulls you into the desolation, loneliness and danger of Odessa, Texas, after a brutal attack that impacts every one of these characters.
I cannot say enough good things about this talented author. She has created a visceral sense of the places and people of West Texas in this tragic story of the disintegration of a good woman’s life after a chance encounter with a rape victim.
I think this book does one of the best descriptions/illustrations of womens’ rage that I’ve encountered in fiction. Highly, highly recommend, especially to women readers – I’m not sure many men would get the point of this novel (don’t mean to be sexist here, but…) This is one of the best novels I’ve read so far this year, and the fact that it is a first novel makes it even more amazing.
I did like this book, but it left me feeling conflicted.
Elizabeth Wetmore’s novel Valentine is some of the best fiction to come out of West Texas since Cormac McCarthy’s novels. It is a well-written work that explores themes of womanhood, misogyny, racism, and the bust and boom cycles of small town America. Wetmore’s prose is sparse, but beautiful and effective. The story revolves around several women in the oil boom days of 1976 Odessa, Texas, where crime and iniquity are as abundant as sagebrush and oil derricks. I give this book a high recommendation.
Valentine is the debut novel from acclaimed author Elizabeth Wetmore. An instant New York Times Bestseller and a Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club pick, it’s a stunning novel of literary fiction that depicts the lives of several women in Odessa, Texas during the 1970s as they wrestle with the aftermath of the rape of Gloria Ramirez early in the morning on Valentine’s Day, 1976. Told through the different women’s points of view, Wetmore puts on a master class in storytelling.
The novel opens with Gloria Ramirez escaping her assailant, Dale Strickland, who brutally attacked her the night before, as she trudges barefoot three miles through cow pastures to Mary Rose’s front porch, a pregnant mother at home with her young daughter. Gloria begs Mary Rose for water and shelter. Strickland eventually shows up for Gloria, but Mary Rose keeps him at bay by pointing her rifle at him until the cops show up. A tense opening to a novel that unspools the lives of these two women and the others that orbit this event: Corrine, young Debra Ann, Ginny, Suzanne, Karla. All of their lives are revealed and the indignities they face from the men in Odessa, as well as judgment and shame they face from the community as a whole when they don’t act the way they should: prim, proper, quiet, subservient. When Strickland gets off with only probation and a fine, this injustice sends Mary Rose off the deep end, her rage not easy to quell.
Although this is a debut, Wetmore has published short stories for a while in notable literary journals. Her confidence shines through the various narrative points of view, particularly with the first-person Mary Rose, third-person Corrine, and first-person plural (!!!) Karla chapters. Wetmore has beautifully executed metaphors and similes and her characters are fully-formed and four-dimensional, the entirety of their humanity on display: their despair, their love, their rage, and their dissatisfaction with life in Odessa. Although the story opens with a couple of intense chapters that would inform most readers that a crime thriller will be told, Wetmore downshifts into the lives of all these women who orbit around the horrific event that Gloria Ramirez endured. Then once Dale Strickland’s trial commences two-thirds of the way through the novel, the intensity picks back up, only to extinguish any sense of hope or justice for Glory (Gloria changes her name after the rape) as well as the other women invested in her well-being. It’s a brutally sad turn of events.
But where the novel shines most brightly are with its characters. I became fully invested in these women. I felt I knew these women. I have met and known many like them here in Texas. Many of their observations about the others in Odessa are brutally honest, searing, and sometimes hilarious. And that is a marvelous thing for readers.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and I highly recommend it. I would give this novel 5 stars.
1976 Odessa, Texas. The book begins with a rape of young 14-year-old girl, Gloria Ramirez, by an older white man, Dale Strickland, the son of a preacher, who bears no remorse for what he’s done. Subsequent chapters trace the aftermath, but rather than focusing solely on Gloria’s story, this book tells five separate stories, of five women, loosely connected by life but caught in the same painful, stifling misery. Some reviewers didn’t like the constant shifting among the five women narrators, but to me it suggested their fate was inescapable; every woman, not just one or two, experienced pain with a different source. The only help for it was to grab the car keys and drive out of town because the brutality in Odessa is pervasive and systemic, tainting every aspect of life.
In Wetmore’s hands, oil is at once the source of material wealth and a metaphor for the darkness, the crudeness that is inheres in very bedrock of the town. At one point, the oil erupts from a new well, completely out of control, stinking and sliming across the ground, blackening the land and smothering through slow death all the plants in its way. So here, the football players suffer concussions–“they have their bell rung a little”–and keep on playing. Pastor Rob preaches the evils of desegregation: it’s like “locking a cow, a mountain lion, and a possum in the same barn together, then being surprised when somebody gets eaten.” And a white man who rapes a Hispanic girl gets away with it. The few attempts at kindness–the young girl DA trying to help a Vietnam veteran, a woman testifying on Gloria’s behalf–end badly, with vicious threats and near-fatal consequences.
My one difficulty with the book is that while circumstances change–Mary Rose moves off her ranch and into town; Glory leaves Texas for Mexico with her uncle–I didn’t find that the characters change. That is, there’s change but not much, if any, evidence of psychological growth, and I look for that in a book. That said, Wetmore has built a dark world and a relentlessly harrowing tale, with language that is strong and poetic. I’ll be interested to see what she writes next.
My Review of Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore; published by Harper
Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore pulled me in instantly. The subject matter is raw and hurts to read. I found myself enraged throughout most of this story, yet I also found myself not just smiling, but even chuckling out loud. Elizabeth created numerous characters, all of which will push your emotion button in one way or another. Mary Rose touched my heart immensely. I could feel her personal struggles and the torment she was enduring. She was also the character that had me chuckling the most as her ways with words were unabashed. There’s also a young girl, Debra Ann, (aka DA), who reminded me of my early childhood years of playing outside for hours upon hours. My mom would always tell us she’d give us plenty to do if we wanted to be inside. Nope! Bathing was definitely not at the top of my list either. I remember having a dirty neck that had to be scrubbed relentlessly every Sunday night during bath time. I enjoyed the memories Elizabeth’s story evoked. Bench seats and H&S Green Stamps were very much a part of my world. My first iron was acquired through my mom’s perseverance in saving countless H&S stamps. I felt some of the characters’ stories to be a little drawn out and I had to really pay attention to who was talking or being talked about. However; Elizabeth brought to light a multitude of powerful issues, such as bigotry and traumatic experiences, all of which warrant the narrative. Therefore, I recommend Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore.
I really liked this book. It was a hard, realistic topic to read about. It is a story that is too scary, real; that is for certain. I am glad that this author had the courage to write a book about a violent topic that has happened to many young girls and women, as well. I know it had to be hard to write but people need to read books like this and really think about how lives are impacted. There are a lot of people that just don’t seem to care about others, anymore. People seem to be too self-absorbed.