Eleanor and Abel - Hardcover

Annette Sanford

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0091799635 ISBN 13: 9780091799632

Publisher: Cornerstone, 2003

Synopsis

When a storm tears a hole in Miss Eleanor Bannister's roof, the itinerant carpenter who volunteers to repair it is so capable and charming that he remodels Miss Eleanor's life. A retired schoolteacher in the town where she's always lived, Eleanor, at the age of sixty-nine, finds the sudden presence of Abel Brown in her life unnerving and unsettling - and after a time, irresistible. Abel shakes up her fixed ideas of who she is and starts her wanting something she never imagined for herself. Amid many complications, Eleanor and Abel proceed on the fractious course of their courtship, in a novel that is never less than captivating, engaging and utterly charming. Praise for Annette Sanford-'Sanford is very very good.' New York Times 'The stories all ride on dialogue, spare and rhythmical, like Elmore Leonard's beat behind Eudora Welty's lyrics.' The New York Times Book Review'Sanford has a poetic way with a sentence and she writes original, off-kilter dialogue; by turns witty and exceptionally wise, her characters are always impeccably imagined.' Publisher's Weekly

About this title

About the Author:

A native Texan, Annette Sanford taught high-school English before becoming a full-time writer. Her work has been published in journals, in Best American Short Stories, and her stories have been read on NPR's 'Selected Shorts'. She lives in Ganado, Texas.

From Booklist:

Eleanor, 69 and a spinster, has rented out a cottage for years, but now decides she's too tired to keep it up. Abel, a 70-year-old itinerant handyman, fortuitously notices that the roof is in need of repair and offers to renovate the cottage in exchange for rent. Eleanor at first refuses, taken aback by his somewhat brash behavior, but realizing she enjoys his company, changes her mind. They begin to grow on each other despite their being set in their individual ways and fiercely independent. They argue, then reconcile. Eleanor tells him she had been so wrapped up in her sacred routine, "I might as well be one of those mummies in the British Museum." Abel acknowledges his roaming ways, but also the fact that he treasures her warmth and gentle humor. Finally, at the quietly moving conclusion to Sanford's tale, they marry, he realizing that he's been searching all his life for her, and she recognizing, in turn, that she's been biding her time, waiting for him. Deborah Donovan
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About this edition

• Publisher: Cornerstone
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0091799635
• ISBN 13: 9780091799632
• Binding: Hardcover