A Country of Strangers - Hardcover

Shreve, Susan Richards

3.46

35 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671644092 ISBN 13: 9780671644093

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1989

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Charlie Fletcher moves his family to a Virginia farm during World War II and enters into conflict with the take-over Bellows brothers

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From Publishers Weekly:

When he accepts a government post in Washington during WW II, Charley Fletcher moves his Danish wife, Lara, her teenage daughter, Kate, and their baby son to a farm tucked into the Virginia countryside. There, he plans to begin anew, living in harmony with the Bellowses, a family descended from the slaves who once worked the farm. Charley's idealistic fancy stems not from principle, but from a deep need to form a union "in a country of strangers, of loneliness and isolation and a longing to walk in the company of friends." Moses Bellows takes a jaundiced view of this naive white man who rushes like an eager puppy to overstep racial boundaries. In the end, though, the shot that breaks the tenuous links between the families could have come from any one of them. The pleasing lyricism of Shreve's ( Queen of Hearts ) prose has a dreamy, unfocused quality that keeps these characters at arm's length. Although they revolve around one another like tiny planets on a hidden axis, each remains a stranger at heart, a fact that may discourage readers who care to come closer.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

When John Spencer mysteriously disappeared in 1935, his black sharecroppers moved into the ancestral Virginia home and lived there, operating the farm as their own, until the estate, Elm Grove, was sold for taxes. The novel opens in 1942. Charlie Fletcher and his wife, Lara, have purchased Elm Grove and taken possession with the intention of befriending the recently displaced Bellows family. But Charlie's naive liberalism, born of years in the North, only serves to offend his new neighbors and ultimately leads to tragedy. Shreve's novel is a study in race relations, fraught with suppressed prejudice, passion, and misunderstandings. It is a compelling piece that leaves the reader with hope for a better future. Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. at Carbondale Lib.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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