Elizabeth Berg, bestselling author of The Art of Mending and The Year of Pleasures, has a rare talent for revealing her characters’ hearts and minds in a manner that makes us empathize completely. We Are All Welcome Here features three women, each struggling against overwhelming odds for her own kind of freedom. It is the summer of 1964. In Tupelo, Mississippi, the town of Elvis’s birth, … Mississippi, the town of Elvis’s birth, tensions are mounting over civil-rights demonstrations occurring ever more frequently–and violently–across the state. But in Paige Dunn’s small, ramshackle house, there are more immediate concerns. Challenged by the effects of the polio she contracted during her last month of pregnancy, Paige is nonetheless determined to live as normal a life as possible and to raise her daughter, Diana, in the way she sees fit–with the support of her tough-talking black caregiver, Peacie.
Diana is trying in her own fashion to live a normal life. As a fourteen-year-old, she wants to make money for clothes and magazines, to slough off the authority of her mother and Peacie, to figure out the puzzle that is boys, and to escape the oppressiveness she sees everywhere in her small town. What she can never escape, however, is the way her life is markedly different from others’. Nor can she escape her ongoing responsibility to assist in caring for her mother. Paige Dunn is attractive, charming, intelligent, and lively, but her needs are great–and relentless.
As the summer unfolds, hate and adversity will visit this modest home. Despite the difficulties thrust upon them, each of the women will find her own path to independence, understanding, and peace. And Diana’ s mother, so mightily compromised, will end up giving her daughter an extraordinary gift few parents could match.
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This is the first book I had read by Elizabeth Berg and would read another of her novels for sure. This book looks at the life of a young girl who must help care for her mother who is an invalid from polio. You really get an insight into the life and feelings of this young girl and all that she and her mother endure in their journey. It was a …
By chance I stumbled across the writer Elizabeth Berg. I went to the library to get a couple of CDs to listen to while on a road trip. One of those CDs was We Are All Welcome Here. I fell in love with her writing. I have since listened to Dream When You’re Feeling Blue (loved the ending). .
We Are All Welcome Here is a historical fiction book, …