Left virtually alone after the disappearance of her mother and death of her beloved older brother, Emily Parmenter has built a life around the plantation where her remote father and hunter-obsessed brothers raise their legendary hunting spaniels. It is a narrow world, but to Emily it has magic: deep-sea dolphins who play in Sweetwater Creek; her extraordinary bond with the dogs she trains; her almost mystic communion with her own spaniel, Elvis; the quiet of the river and marshes. Then comes Lulu Foxworth, who has run away from her hectic Charleston debutante season to spend a summer in the spell of the low country. Lulu has a powerful enchantment of her own, and this, along with the dark secret she brings with her, will inevitably blow Emily's world apart-at a terrible price.
1 of 1 copy available
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
August 2, 2006 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780792744412
- File size: 320524 KB
- Duration: 11:07:45
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Anna Fields crafts an unforgettable voice in 11-year-old Emily Parmenter, who inhabits a beautiful but isolated world on her father's spaniel-breeding plantation. When Lulu Foxworth, a troubled Carolina debutante who craves the plantation's isolation for mysterious reasons, arrives for a summer stay, the tempo of Emily's world falters, and unease becomes palpable. Fields's characters are all fully fleshed. In particular, the family cook, Cleta, is a joy; her gravelly world-weary mutterings are a counterpoint to the drawling bellow of Emily's father and the bittersweet shifts of Emily's own voice as it travels from youthful bewilderment, to awakening awareness, to clear-eyed understanding of an adult world. A superior read of a memorable book. A.M.D. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine -
August 15, 2005
Veteran novelist Siddons (Islands
; Nora, Nora
) returns to South Carolina's low country for her latest, a capable but uninspired story of a young girl's coming-of-age on the family plantation. Emily Parmenter is a lonely 12-year-old whose life revolves around the Boykin spaniels her family raises as hunting dogs. Her mother ran off; her beloved disabled brother, Buddy, who introduced her to literature, blew his head off with a shotgun (although Emily has conversations with him in her head); and her father, Walter, withholds all praise and attention. Her solace is her dog, Elvis, and Cleta, the wise black housekeeper. When 20-year-old LuLu Foxworth of the blueblood Foxworths arrives to spend time at the Parmenter plantation and work with the dogs, Emily is reluctant to welcome her, while social-climbing Walter is thrilled, hoping LuLu can teach Emily "to be a lady." The two emotionally neglected girls bond, and Lulu confides her dirty little secret: her addiction to alcohol and the smarmy Yancey Byrd, with whom Lulu has a 9½ Weeks
–style love affair. The plot follows formula and the ends tie up happily for everyone but poor LuLu, the bad rich girl with the heart of gold.
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