Remember Me

by Laura Hendrie

Book Overview

A ferociously determined twenty-nine-year-old, Rose Devonic lives in Queduro, New Mexico, where she--like most others--makes her living selling embroidery. But a tragedy in her past has made her an... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805062181
• ISBN13: 9780805062182
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 373 Pages
• Weight: 1.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

A Finely-Woven Tapestry

The main theme in this book is embroidery, with the title taken from the old samplers that said "When this you see, remember me." and each chapter begins with a quote from an old-fashioned sampler. The book takes place in the tiny, isolated village of Quediro, New Mexico, where embroidery is a religion, especially to those who are called "inheritance embroiderers" with their patterns passed down through the generations, whose work can sell for as much as $20,000.Rose Devonic has lived in Quediro all of her 29 years, but she is an outcast, essentially homeless, and has never been accepted by the townspeople. She refuses to abide by the unwritten rules, doesn't go to church, and will not cater to the tourist trade . She learned embroidery later than most because she had spent her early years helping her uncle with his Indian carvings. For the last 13 years, since her family was killed, she has lived in a motel in the winters, helping out the owner, Birdie, in exchange for having him teach her embroidery. Despite her desire to be independent, we sense in Rose a yearning for acceptance by those in the town. Every one of the book's characters are fully fleshed out-and developed---I felt that if I met them on the street I would recognize them! The relationships that exist in Quediro are written in a believable manner and the tapestry of the community is portrayed in a way that allows the reader to see all of its complexities and differences.Hendrie has written a moving, lovely, and complete novel. I cannot wait to read her next.

Of memory, belonging, and difference

Memory -- its presence and its absence, its wonder and its terror, its helpfulness and its harm -- weaves its way through Laura Hendrie's REMEMBER ME like a minor-key musical leitmotif. Rose Devonic, lifelong resident of tiny Queduro, New Mexico, struggles against the memories of the townspeople; the failing memory of her sometime-nemesis, Alice Pinkston; the bittersweet memory of a family killed in a car accident when Rose was just 16. This is a novel about belonging and difference, remembering and forgetting, acceptance and rejection. Hendrie makes you care about Rose, seeing the world through her slightly offbeat, but clear and decisive eyes. I opened REMEMBER ME at bedtime and turned the last page at 5:00 AM. I couldn't rest without knowing how Rose's life turned out. Read this book. Now.

A Masterpiece of Emotional Nuances

It is a rare find to read a book that is able to capture and develop the nuances of human emotion in its characters. Laura Hendrie's Remember Me is full of brilliant, vivid characters who all have an inescapable connect with one another. Hendrie has presented these characters and their complex relationships with such grace, intensity and passion as I have never read before in a novel. This book is a must read! I cannot wait for her next!

A story written with consummate grace

What remains sacred when everything is for sale? What happens to a tightly-knit community when heritage is traded for an illusory economic security?Laura Hendrie sets "Remember Me" in the forgotten New Mexico town of Queduro. The residents, once miners and shepherds, now rely on tourists for economic survival. Queduro is the most isolated of mountain towns, cut off from the rest of the world in October through May by impassible snows. The town has long spent its winters bent to embroidery, but only in recent years has the outside world developed a taste for their intricately worked crafts.Into this picture of a town struggling to create and maintain the perfect tourist enviroment are set some fairly eccentric characters. Rose Devonic, a twenty-nine year old woman who's been an orphan for the last thirteen years, is in Queduro because it's the only home she's ever known. Rose is as stubborn as she is strong, and she's determined to chart her own course in spite of the town elder's wanting her to spout the tourist line. Already teetering on the far edge of acceptance, Rose crosses the invisible line when she challenges Alice, the sister of a local motel owner, who has returned to this town she'd rather forget to sell her brother's business.Queduro residents, sharply attuned to the business damage eccentrics could wreak, have had it with Rose. Alice presents a different, but fully equal challenge. Though she comes across as a strong and determined seventy-year-old, her mind has started to wander. It is only a matter of time before the town begins to turn on her as well.Laura Hendrie crafts an incredibly lovely and moving tale in this first novel. Though set in the west, her themes are universal. Rose's loss of her home is paralleled by Alice's struggle to hold on to her memory. It's a conflict which unites some very unlikely allies.It would be easy, and unfair, to characterize this work as a book which would appeal only to women. The main characters are women, but the issues raised by this work cross gender lines as easily as they do geographic ones. It is a book that looks at what makes a hero, and how does one make a home. It seems, in Hendrie's vision, home has very little to do with physical grandeur, and a whole lot to do with what you love.This is a wonderful story, beautifully told, and a total immersion experience that should not be missed.

A compassionate and triumphant novel

Have you ever met or known someone that was so hard headed, so strong willed that is sometimes seemed they were their own worst enemy? You know the type, capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Well dear reader, meet Rose Devonic, the heroine of this wonderful novel. Rose lives, using the term loosely, in Queduro, New Mexico, which caters to the tourist trade selling fine embroidery. It is a typical hard scrabble western town that prides itself on the myth of individualism while being bound together in tradition, history, gossip and the lure of the tourist dollar, not unlike any other western community. Ironically, the town's problem with Rose is her for real, stubborn, individualistic streak. Rose was left destitute at age 16 due to an automobile accident that killed her family and a neighbor, Florie. She learns embroidery from Florie's brother, Birdie, who also runs the town's only motel. She lives out of her car in the summer and in one of Birdie's motel rooms in the winter. The problem, one of many, is that Birdie's sister, Alice, disapproves of Rose and the arrangement between her and Birdie. The plot thickens when Birdie suffers a stroke, Alice becomes his caretaker and begins exhibiting signs of Alzheimer's disease, and the townspeople, never fond of Rose, plot to take over the motel. Rose finds herself without money, lodging, or any friends save one. Frank, the town sheriff and childhood friend and former lover tries to help Rose and counteract the town's hostile and selfish attitude. Thrown in a death, a tragic-comic road trip, Rose's stubborness, Frank's persistence and a town that would rather see Rose gone and you have the making's of a good story. This is a story of love, courage, tragedy, humor, small-town life in northern New Mexico, and the seemingly inevitable tension betwen fierce independence and the urge to belong, all rolled into one compassionate, and in the end, triumphant novel. Readers will hear, and demand, more from Laura Hendrie in the future. This book is worth your time.