One Hundred Years Of Marriage
2nd Edition
by Louise Farmer Smith
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
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Pub Date Sep 15 2016 | Archive Date Nov 20 2016
Upper Hand Press | Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Titles
Description
"What was your father thinking the night he proposed to your mother? What did she say? By the time we ask, all the compelling details have cooled into whatever myths they've chosen to tell us. Our grandparents' stories are even more frozen, and the truths of our great-grandparents' unions have perished in the airless memories of the dead."
These questions and stories are brought to life as One Hundred Years of Marriage examines the marriage choices made by the women in four generations of one American family, engaging the reader with superb storytelling and with inevitable comparisons to the lives of women in our own families.
Each story is told from the point of view of a child who observes her parents' marriage, absorbing the standards, prejudices, and over-heard conversations that will subconsciously influence her (or his) own choice of a spouse.
These questions and stories are brought to life as One Hundred Years of Marriage examines the marriage choices made by the women in four generations of one American family, engaging the reader with superb storytelling and with inevitable comparisons to the lives of women in our own families.
Each story is told from the point of view of a child who observes her parents' marriage, absorbing the standards, prejudices, and over-heard conversations that will subconsciously influence her (or his) own choice of a spouse.
Advance Praise
“I loved this book. I admire the risks Louise Farmer Smith took in telling this four-generation story from back to front… Smith has given us a wonderfully satisfying work of imagination as well as a perceptive dose of social history. I also admired the surprise ending.” —Gail Godwin, author of Flora and and Publishing: A Writer’s Memoir
“...One Hundred Years of Marriage renders the mysteries and complexities of family life—of how we become who we are—in profound and original ways.” —Jay Neugeboren, author of Imagining Robert, 1940, and The Other Side of the World, among others.
“One Hundred Years of Marriage is a brilliant and empathic journey into the prehistory of the modern women’s equality movement…The…author explores the many ways that marriage operated tragically upon wives and the ways that dysfunction in one generation can have unanticipated ripple effects in subsequent generations. Yet, throughout the book, the hard lives of the female characters are offset by moments of dignity and caring.” —William Eskridge, Jr., John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence, Yale Law School and teacher of “Sexuality, Gender, and the Law.”
“...One Hundred Years of Marriage renders the mysteries and complexities of family life—of how we become who we are—in profound and original ways.” —Jay Neugeboren, author of Imagining Robert, 1940, and The Other Side of the World, among others.
“One Hundred Years of Marriage is a brilliant and empathic journey into the prehistory of the modern women’s equality movement…The…author explores the many ways that marriage operated tragically upon wives and the ways that dysfunction in one generation can have unanticipated ripple effects in subsequent generations. Yet, throughout the book, the hard lives of the female characters are offset by moments of dignity and caring.” —William Eskridge, Jr., John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence, Yale Law School and teacher of “Sexuality, Gender, and the Law.”
Marketing Plan
The 2nd edition that replaces the sold-out first edition of One Hundred Years of Marriage contains an author interview conducted by Ronna Wineberg, Senior Fiction Editor of the Bellevue Literary Review. It also contains suggested questions for book club discussion.
The content of this novel makes it excellent book club material at the same time that it is substantial reading for women’s studies and women’s history courses. The beautiful story-telling is all based on research into the author’s own family and the history of Oklahoma’s pioneer, dugout-dwelling, and prairie-town women.
One Hundred Years of Marriage addresses through story and character central questions about the institution of marriage, family identity, and the tension that gender roles have historically created for individual women. How does the historical legacy of feminine domestic constraints have real bearing on contemporary women?
The content of this novel makes it excellent book club material at the same time that it is substantial reading for women’s studies and women’s history courses. The beautiful story-telling is all based on research into the author’s own family and the history of Oklahoma’s pioneer, dugout-dwelling, and prairie-town women.
One Hundred Years of Marriage addresses through story and character central questions about the institution of marriage, family identity, and the tension that gender roles have historically created for individual women. How does the historical legacy of feminine domestic constraints have real bearing on contemporary women?