Daughters of Memory: A Novel - Hardcover

Arnold, Janis

3.22

92 ratings by Goodreads

9780945575689: Daughters of Memory: A Novel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0945575688 ISBN 13: 9780945575689

Publisher: Algonquin Books, 1991

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Reunited as adults to tend to the declining health of their parents and grandmother, Claire Louise and Mary Rose Richards--two rival sisters from an emotionally dysfunctional family--are prompted to explore the dark family secret that has destroyed theirlives

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About the Author:

Janis Arnold, a native Texan, has also lived in Florida and North Carolina. She currently lives with her husband and son in San Antonio, where she teaches school. She earned a B.A. from the University of Central Florida and an M.A. from the University of Houston. Her first novel, Daughters of Memory, was published by Algonquin in 1991 and reissued as a Front Porch paperback in 1993.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A tale of two angry sisters, linked by their traumatic rural- Texas childhood, divided by their wildly divergent ways of coping with their past--slyly revealed by a masterful first novelist and native Texan. Claire Louise was the pretty one in the Richards family-- blond, curvaceous, a cheerleader at the local high school in Molly's Point--but Macy Rose, the brown-haired, sour-faced younger sister, had the brains. Though it was Macy who remained on the farm to care for the girls' dour father, helpless mother and stoic grandmother when Claire ran off to Louisiana with her high-school- dropout boyfriend, their parents hardly noticed Macy in their anxiety over what darling Claire Louise was up to. When Claire returns ten years later, two kids in tow, spouting fictional tales of a glamorous life in New York City, a marital tragedy and a determination to make good in Molly's Point by devoting herself to her poor dependent parents, Macy tries to escape the reappearance of her sister through a marriage to a Houston psychologist--but Macy's own hidden resentments concerning her family prove too deep to ignore. The sisters' relationship develops into an escalating rivalry, first over their parents' favor and then, after their deaths, over their wills, until it ends in the raising of barbed- wire fences, the destruction of both sisters' marriages and the neglect and alienation of their children. It takes years for Macy finally to confront the real reason for such passion--the dark secret of her father's abuse that, along with the sisters' refusal to acknowledge it, nearly demolished both their lives. Arnold's remarkable ear for Texan dialogue and her sense for the psychological accuracy captivate the reader as her mystery unfolds, while her straight-faced humor surprises and entertains. An impressively controlled first effort. -- Copyright �1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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