Gardenias

by Faith Sullivan

Book Overview

It's 1942, just a month after the United States entered World War II. Lark, her mother Arlene, and Aunt Betty are in a station changing trains, leaving their lives in Harvester, Minnesota behind, and waiting for the train going to Los Angeles. Young men--soldiers--swarm the platform, heading off to war.

Against this dramatic backdrop, Gardenias revisits Faith Sullivan's most beloved characters from The Cape Ann, taking...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1571310452
• ISBN13: 9781571310453
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.7" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful Story

This book is the sequil to "The Cape Ann". Yet I liked this book even more. The characters stayed in my head long after I finished the book. I would highly recommend this one.

Gardenia

This was a great book and brought me back to my childhood. I was born 1944 and lived in an Army Barracks for a while. My father served in WWII and died at age 39 so anything that brings back some memories of my childhood gets an A++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The book was well written and the plot was probably not unique for the times. However it gave me an insight into what was happening in America during the war on the home front.

Gardenias: A Novel

I couldn't put this book down, as was the case with it's prequil, The Cape Anne. Gardenias is a great journey through the lives of real characters. Their dreams, loves and heartaches are made tangible by Ms. Sullivan's ability to write, with clarity, in her raw and gripping style. You will fall in love with Lark, the child through whom this world is lived. You will become acquainted with the perplexing nature of humans in their struggles to find happiness.

A must read!

The long-awaited sequel to Cape Ann has finally arrived. Lark Erhardt, her mother Arlene, and Aunt Betty arrive in San Diego in 1942, breaking away from their Depression-era lives in Harvester, Minnesota with abusive, gambling Willie Erhardt. Aunt Betty is still suffering from the death of her baby and the abandonment of her husband, Stanley. Arlene holds the family together, finding housing in a wartime project and a job as a secretary at Consolidated Aircraft. Betty finds work as a clerk in a big department store. Lark must cope with a gang of violent and ruthlessly vicious boys who threaten her. She deals with it by mostly staying at home, writing and hiding. Lark finds a magical painting of a cabin in the woods, and imagines it is in Minnesota and that she is living there. She starts fourth grade and is terribly alone, only her writing to hold on to. She misses Minnesota, but not her father. They attempt to make a home, planting a gardenia bush and some daisies that Lark carefully waters every day. Betty and Arlene befriend lonely sailors, giving them home-cooked meals on the weekend. Shirley, another misfit girl, finds food, praise, and a safe haven with Lark's family from her own very dysfunctional family life. Shirley is prickly and even sometimes nasty to Lark. Almost a second child in the family, Shirley takes piano lessons from Aunt Betty, and the family helps clothe her and finance her further musical education. For Shirley, music is an escape--just as Lark's writing is a refuge. Upheavals come in many forms: Willie comes to California to demand their return; Uncle Stanley shows up, telling them he has enlisted. Neighbors in the project become dear friends, as Lark learns their stories and tells them hers. Finally several events shatter all their lives, and change them forever. Armchair Interviews says: Sullivan is a wonderful and evocative storyteller, making the 1940s and wartime San Diego, the labor movement, the death of Roosevelt, and social upheaval of women in the workforce, the music and the fear, all come alive.

A wonderful, deeply satisfying novel

I loved GARDENIAS. I could not put it down. With consummate skill and grace and the easy mastery of a mature writer, Faith Sullivan creates and populates a world that lives and breathes. The novel is funny and moving and suspenseful and deeply wise--both a pageturner and a literary classic. Read this novel, give it to your friends, pass it on to your children.