How I Got Him Back - Hardcover

Sayers, Valerie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385243766 ISBN 13: 9780385243766

Publisher: Doubleday, 1988

Synopsis

Set in Due East, South Carolina, the lives of Becky Purdue, Marygail Dugan, Mary Faith, and a collection of other locals unfold as they struggle with temptation, adversity, and the powerful effect of the Catholic church

About this title

About the Author:

Valerie Sayers is the author of five novels: Due East; How I Got Him Back, or, Under the Cold Moon's Shine; Who Do You Love; The Distance Between Us; and Brain Fever. Who Do You Love and Brain Fever were named New York Times "Notable Books of the Year," and a film, Due East, was based on her novels Due East and How I Got Him Back. She has received a Pushcart Prize for fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts literature fellowship and has served on two NEA literature panels. Her stories, essays, and reviews appear widely in such journals as Zoetrope, Ploughshares, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Commonweal, and have been cited in Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays.

From Publishers Weekly:

Mary Faith Rapple of Due East is now the mother of four-year-old Jesse, whose imminent arrival she described to her scandalized widower father as "a virgin birth." This sequel is every bit as funny as its predecessor, but while that book focused on Mary Faith and her dilemma, here Sayers harvests the black humor inherent in several situations. Jack Perdue has left his wife Becky for the tart who works in his real estate office (he flees her in due course, disgusted by her nail polish); Father Berkeley has started drinking too much, and worries the ladies of the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Altar Guild; Stephen Dugan, who loves his wife Marygail, his faith and Mary Faith, is seriously considering leaving his wifeif only Mary Faith would convert to Catholicism. Sayers's keen and subtle wit, the wonderful rhythms of her prose, make these otherwise trite situations funny and touching. Fans of Due East will find this novel more diffuse; but while that was a book to hug to one's chest, this one begs to be read aloud and shared. Sayers has a voice, and it's one the reader wants to keep hearing from.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0385243766
• ISBN 13: 9780385243766
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 299