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Description edit
On the coast of Alabama, there is a house cloaked in mystery, a place that reveals the truth and changes lives...Ellie is in a dying marriage. She knows this. After her controlling mother, Lillian, passes away, Ellie's world is turned upside down when she discovers that her ex-boyfriend,... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Characters/People edit
- Sara Matthews: Woman Rusty started dating
- Rusty Calvin: Ellie's husband
- Hutch O'Brien: Ellie's old college flame
- Micah Reynolds: Lillie's friend during the Civil Rights Movement
- Drew: Hutch's friend who is an animal doctor
- Ms. Birdie Worthington: Owns the summer house in Alabama
- Lillian Eddington Calvin: Main character and narrator (Ellie)
- Ashley: Drew's daughter who worked at the book store
- Babs Friedman: writer who was doing a story on Birdie's summer house
- Mama: Could be Lillie's mother or Hutch's mother
- Lillian Caulfield Ashford Eddington: Ellie's mother
- Mrs. Prinkle: woman Lillie worked for in 1962
- Mr. Murphy: owned a restaurant where the Civil Rights workers staged a sit-in
- Redmond Eddington: Lillie's husband
- Anna Morehead: involved in Lillie's charity work
- Don Morgan: magazine photographer
- Leona Riordan: owner of the bookstore/art store in Alabama
- Hillary: Hutch's girl friend
- Otis Shepherd: Lillie's friend from the Civil Rights era
- Belinda: friend of Ellie's
- Lil: Ellie's daughter who is in college
- Ms. Ellie: main character
- Mrs. Broome: Ellie's childhood neighbor who was celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary
- Mitzi Burroughs: woman who stayed in the summer house and learned some unexpected things about her husband and family
- Uncle Cotton: Ellie's uncle
- Bitsy Morgan: friend of Birdie and Drew in Bayside
- Edwin: Hutch's cousin
- Melody Gardot: singer Ellie liked
Quotes edit
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“There are nights when the places and spaces in a life shift, disassemble, and then reassemble in the sliver of time between moments, between seconds. There are people who enter or reenter a life, who touch you or laugh with you in the middle of a jubilee, in the midst of nature's sacrifice, so that your life couldn't be the same even if you wanted it to be so.”
Ellie -
“Sometimes a voice can change a heartbeat.”
Ellie -
“And sometimes to forget the bad parts we have to forget the good parts.”
Birdie -
“Crossroads. We all have them, and they are so often seen only in hindsight.”
Ellie -
“How does a broken heart wait for the man who broke it?”
Lillian -
“The choices we make when we're broken are sometimes the most awful of all our choices.”
Ellie -
“But this is what loss is - the constant realization that what you thought was possible is not.”
Lillian -
“Her whole life she tried to talk herself out of loving you.”
Ellie
- Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
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The choices we make when we’re broken are sometimes the most awful of all our choices.
Highlighted by 30 Kindle customers -
There was a difference between not wanting to lose someone and loving someone.
Highlighted by 25 Kindle customers -
Love is not wanting and needing; it is knowing you would give your life for the other in a way that is absolute. It is knowing that there is not a day that will ever go by—for the rest of your life—when that person will not be on your mind or in your heart.
Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers -
But this is what loss is—the constant realization that what you thought was possible is not.
Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers -
“Sometimes when damage is done to our souls, we stop loving to protect our hearts. Everyone has their own way, but that is not your way.”
Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers -
“Instead of closing the cracked space tight, I allow grace to fill those places.”
Highlighted by 8 Kindle customers -
I think when we start telling the facts instead of the story … when we start living for the stuff and how it looks, we close our hearts.”
Highlighted by 8 Kindle customers -
There are nights when the places and spaces in a life shift, disassemble, and then reassemble in the sliver of time between moments, between seconds. There are people who enter or reenter a life, who touch you or laugh with you in the middle of a jubilee, in the midst of nature’s sacrifice, so that your life couldn’t be the same even if you wanted it to be so.
Highlighted by 8 Kindle customers -
Rusty used his words and his extremes, sweetness and rage, to keep me doing and saying and being exactly what he wanted me to do, say, and be. No more.
Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers -
I was now withering in a marriage and a life that had somehow killed the most precious quadrant of my heart—the part that felt emotion. If I put myself on automatic, there would be no wanting or needing, and the sheltered life would take on its predestined course that required no choosing or action on my part.
Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers
Setting & Locations edit
First Sentence edit
There are both wonderful and awful moments in a woman's life.
Authors & Contributors edit
- Patti Callahan Henry (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Country: USA
Publication Date: 16 August 2011
ISBN: 0312610394
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Country: USA
Publication Date: 16 August 2011
ISBN: 0312610394
Page Count: 272
Awards edit
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 813.6
Subjects edit
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