We Are All Welcome Here - Softcover

Berg, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812971000 ISBN 13: 9780812971002

Publisher: Ballantine Group, 2007

Synopsis

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. Her new novel, 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, 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.

About this title

Review:

"Praise for Elizabeth Berg: 'Berg oozes warmth, wisdom and generosity of spirit. Her writing is quite brilliant, as soft as a kiss, as sharp as a knife. An American Maeve Binchy, a modern-day Jane Austen, whatever praise you heap on Elizabeth Berg, she probably deserves it.' Anna Maxted"

"Berg knows her characters intimately-she gets under their skin and leaves the reader with an indelible impression of lives challenged and changed.' The Seattle Times"

"Heartwrenching-Hilarious-Berg sits somewhere between Anne Tyler and Alice Hoffman.' Chicago Sun-Times"

"Maybe Freud didn't know the answer to what women want, but Elizabeth Berg certainly does.' USA Today"

Book Description:

'Elizabeth Berg writes with humour and a big heart about resilience, loneliness, love and hope. And the transcendence that redeems.' Andre Dubus II

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Group
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0812971000
• ISBN 13: 9780812971002
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224