The Maid's Version - Softcover

Woodrell, Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316205885 ISBN 13: 9780316205887

Publisher: Back Bay Books, 2014

Synopsis

The American master's first novel since Winter's Bone (2006) tells of a deadly dance hall fire and its impact over several generations.

Alma DeGeer Dunahew, the mother of three young boys, works as the maid for a prominent family in West Table, Missouri. Her husband is mostly absent, and, in 1929, her scandalous, beloved younger sister is one of the 42 killed in an explosion at the local dance hall. Who is to blame? Mobsters from St. Louis? The embittered local gypsies? The preacher who railed against the loose morals of the waltzing couples? Or could it have been a colossal accident?

Alma thinks she knows the answer--and that its roots lie in a dangerous love affair. Her dogged pursuit of justice makes her an outcast and causes a long-standing rift with her own son. By telling her story to her grandson, Alma finally gains some solace--and peace for her sister. He is advised to "Tell it. Go on and tell it"--tell the story of his family's struggles, suspicions, secrets, and triumphs.

About this title

Review:

Editors' Choice, Times Book Review

A Best Book of 2013, Slate

A Best Book of 2013, Washington Post

An NPR 2013 "Great Read"

Winner of the 2014 Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction

A Top Five Book of the Year, Kansas City Star

A Best Book of 2013, St. Louis Post Dispatch

Kirkus Reviews selection for the Best Books of 2013

A Best Book of 2013, Capital Times (Madison, Wis.)

An Irish Times Book of the Year

An Irish Mail on Sunday Book of the Year

A Favorite Book of 2013, National Post (Canada)

One of Amazon's Top 10 Best Books of the Month

An Amazon Best Book of the Year

A Best Work of Fiction in 2013, Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
"The Maid's Version is one more resplendent trophy on the shelf of an American master."--William Giraldi, The Daily Beast

"The Maid's Version is stunning. Daniel Woodrell writes flowing, cataclysmic prose with the irresistible aura of fate about it."--Sam Shepard

"Further proof, as if we needed it, that Woodrell is a writer to cherish."--Adam Woog, Seattle Times

"Throughout this remarkable book, Woodrell is an unsentimental narrator of an era that is rendered both kinder and infinitely less forgiving than our own."--Ellah Allfrey, NPR Books

"Woodrell captures the run-down, put-upon underbelly of America better than anyone, because he knows it better than anyone."--Benjamin Percy, Esquire.com

"The Maid's Version will sweep readers away."--Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today

"A distinctive blend of lush metaphor and brisk storytelling."--Laura Miller, Salon

"In fewer than 200 pages, but with a richness of theme and character worthy of the weightiest Victorian novel, Woodrell brings West Table to life in the varied experiences of its sons and daughters. "--Wendy Smith, Washington Post

"Woodrell's language echoes melodically with the vernacular of the Ozarks, traces of folk song, the cadences of the Bible. Sometimes he offers, seemingly with little effort, as if from a bottomless repository, pithy similes. This of Alma: "grief has chomped on her like wolves do a calf." At other times, sentences leisurely unspool: "The Missouri river floated sixty yards from the street, and there was a small crotchety tavern on the corner." [Woodrell] belongs within a great, predominantly male tradition of American writing that stretches back to Mark Twain and runs on through Willa Cather, William Faulkner, James Dickey, Larry McMurtry to Cormac McCarthy. From the vantage of their willed exile they have produced, down the generations, some of their country's finest fiction and poetry."--Peter Pierce, the Australian

Book Description:

By the acclaimed author of Winter's Bone, the dark, glittering story of two families divided by class and linked by a mysterious tragedy.

About this edition

• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0316205885
• ISBN 13: 9780316205887
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192