The Things I Know Best: A Novel - Hardcover

Lynne Hinton

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062517279 ISBN 13: 9780062517272

Publisher: HarperOne, 2001

Synopsis

Haunting memories, a love affair, and a tragic secret -- welcome to Pleasant Cross, North Carolina, home to generations of the Ivy family. Admittedly headstrong, each of the Ivy women is blessed -- and cursed -- with a gift of Knowing. Great-grandmother Lodie could call the evil spirits out of a person, while Big Lucille was known to associate with ghosts. Grandma Pinot interprets the sky, Mama Bertie helps out at Lynch's Mortuary with her portents of upcoming passings, and daughter Liddy can tell who folks will marry by looking at their hands. But it's Liddy's twin sister, Tessa, and her discovery of her own special gift that frames this extraordinary tale of women, strength, and family history.

During the summer of the twins' eighteenth year, Aunt Doris's prediction comes to pass: out of all the Ivy women, Tessa's gift will be the most potent. One look in her own glass shows Tessa visions of Liddy with a suitcase, Mama and Reverend Lawson, and Old Man Jenkins's face sneering up through her tea eaves. When Reverend Moses Renfrow and his son, Sterling, roll into town in their pickup truck and silver Airstream trailer, the rains follow and Grandma's words hold true: "Storms and love always squeeze out the secrets." As the layers of the past unfold, a tragic story is revealed, teaching Tessa and the rest of the Ivys the meaning and power of faith, kinship, and love.

About this title

About the Author:

A retreat leader and writing teacher, Lynne Hinton is the author of numerous novels including Pie Town, Wedding Cake, Christmas Cake, Friendship Cake, Hope Springs, and Forever Friends. She also writes a mystery series under the name Jackie Lynn. She lives in New Mexico.

From Publishers Weekly:

Hinton's second book is an even more compelling and enjoyable slice of smalltown life than her bestselling debut novel, Friendship Cake. Tessa, the 18-year-old narrator, belongs to the Ivy clan: a trailer-park-dwelling family full of strong women with unusual gifts for "knowing" things. Tessa's mother, Mama Bertie, can predict deaths in the community; her grandmother foretells the weather; and her twin sister, Liddy, reads palms. Tessa's own cryptic glimpses of the future come in tea leaves and dreams. The novel revolves around her attempts to unravel the mysteries of her visions and her family's secrets. There is Mama Bertie's bitter enmity toward her best friend from youth (an issue no one will discuss), and her suspiciously close relationship with the preacher. There is the strange hostility of Mr. Jenkins, one of the richest men in town. And there is the deeply spiritual Reverend Renfrew, who rolls into town in an old Airstream trailer with his own secrets and ways of "knowing." Hinton guides us through this landscape of absorbing characters with good humor and a gift for mixing the mystical with the everyday. Dialogues take place amid simple activities brought so cinematically to life that the visual images fairly jump out. Hinton even escapes triteness in her description of Tessa's first love, a relationship that pulls everyone's secrets together and out into the open. The prose is fresh, the characters absorbing, and Hinton achieves the resolution of the novel's mysteries through a satisfying blend of love, death, grace and redemption.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0062517279
• ISBN 13: 9780062517272
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176