Sarah's Daughter - Softcover

Ruth Bass

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0977405346 ISBN 13: 9780977405343

Publisher: Gadd & Company Publishers, Inc., 2007

Synopsis

FOR READERS 12 YEARS OLD TO ADULT Rose begins to think of her mother as Sarah because the very word mother makes her cry. She continually asks herself what her mother would do about breakfast for the family; about how to take care of her siblings; about her father s drinking and going off to a hotel almost every evening. After the unusual accident that killed her mother, fourteen-year-old Rose Hibbard copes. She is forced to take on her silently grieving father and her younger brother and sister. Without a role model of her own, she becomes one for her eight-year-old sister. She makes breakfast, gets everyone started for the day, does the washing and ironing and sewing, and still manages to get to school and do her own homework. Interspersed with Rose s moments of panic or despair are warm hours shared with her friends, Alice and Emily, who listen and help and have fun with her; times familiar to most American teenagers today. As are the nights she stares at the moon and wishes on stars, as well as her developing romance with young Newton Barnes. Just when Rose thinks her family will find a way to manage without a mother, her father says she will have to leave school for good in the spring. Her teacher is her main adult ally. School is where she is happiest and feels most comfortable, where life feels almost normal for someone her age. The one thing that has kept her going, giving her the will to take care of everyone and stay awake in class is her lifelong dream of becoming a teacher, and it disappears in a matter of seconds. Her brother and sister often sneak off to cry at their mother s grave, and Rose s father, unable to face his own loss, becomes increasingly gruff and silent. She overhears a gossipy neighbor saying something about her father being at the drink. And when she comes home early one day and discovers her father, his trousers in a heap on the floor, laughing in her parents bedroom with a half-clothed woman, she flees to the wo

About this title

About the Author

As a newspaper reporter and columnist, Ruth Bass has been telling the stories of real people for a long time. A descendant of generations of New Englanders, she has also listened all her life to people like the characters in Sarah s Daughter, her first venture into fiction. A resident of the Berkshires, in Massachusetts, she has won many awards for writing and editing and was recently inducted into the New England Press Association s Hall of Fame. She is a graduate of Bates College and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, has been an elected town official and is married to novelist Milton Bass. They have three adult children. She writes a weekly newspaper column on everything from politics to puppies, is author of twelve cookbooks, and in her spare time turns to gardening, reading, knitting, photography, travel, tennis and golf.

Reviews

Rose assumes a heavy burden of domestic duties after her mother's accidental death sends the family into a tailspin. Gruff and uncommunicative, her father, Silas, threatens to pull her out from school so she can tend house full time, ruining the bright 14-year-old's dreams of becoming a teacher. As Silas takes more and more to "the drink" and then starts carrying on quite indiscreetly with a woman in town, Rose reaches a breaking point. Her desperation and grief drive her to hold vigil at her mother's graveside, threatening her own health as a result. Set in a small New England farm community in the late 1800s, this first novel offers an absorbing glimpse of its period, rich in insights about the domestic responsibilities facing many young women, about rural life's seemingly limitless chores, and about the small pleasures that helped lessen the daily grind's sting. A caring community led by Rose's teacher brings the crisis to a hopeful and realistic resolution. O'Malley, Anne

Edition details

• Publisher: Gadd & Company Publishers, Inc.
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0977405346
• ISBN 13: 9780977405343
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400