Call Your Daughter Home

by Deb Spera Narrated by Robin Miles, Adenrele Ojo, Brittany Pressley

Overview

Featured on Oprah's Summer Reading List

For readers of Delia Owens' Where the Crawdads Sing and Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, this extraordinary historical debut novel follows three fierce Southern women in an unforgettable story of motherhood and womanhood.

It's 1924 in Branchville, South Carolina and three women have come to a crossroads. Gertrude, a mother of four, must make an unconscionable decision to save her daughters. Retta, a first-generation freed slave, comes to Gertrude's aid by watching her children, despite the gossip it causes in her community. Annie, the matriarch of the influential Coles family, offers Gertrude employment at her sewing circle, while facing problems of her own at home.

These three women seemingly have nothing in common, yet as they unite to stand up to injustices that have long plagued the small town, they find strength in the bond that ties women together. Told in the pitch-perfect voices of Gertrude, Retta, and Annie, Call Your Daughter Home is an emotional, timeless story about the power of family, community, and ferocity of motherhood.

“Like Jill McCorkle and Sue Monk Kidd, Spera probes the comfort and strength women find in their own company.”
- O, The Oprah Magazine

“A mesmerizing Southern tale...Authentic, gripping, a page-turner, yet also a novel filled with language that begs to be savored.”
- Lisa Wingate, New York Times Bestselling Author of Before We Were Yours

Editorial Reviews

AUGUST 2019 - AudioFile

Robin Miles, Adenrele Ojo, and Brittany Pressley team up to narrate this audiobook about three unforgettable mothers in South Carolina in 1924. Miles voices Annie, a plantation owner’s wife and businesswoman in her own right, with a regal, prideful tone and clear enunciation. Ojo voices Retta, a first-generation freed slave, with tenacious righteousness, a perfect complement to her firm but generous nature. Pressley voices Gertrude, an impoverished and battered mother of four, with a hint of vocal fry that precisely reflects her harsh life. Pressley’s narration of children’s voices is particularly admirable and realistic—she sounds like a completely different person altogether. A wonderful, varied cast brings three seemingly unrelated women together in ways they never expected. A.K.R. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

From the Publisher

"Full-of-heart debut." -Garden & Gun

"Spera's sure-footed depictions of women's friendships and mother-daughter relationships are the book's strengths." - Kirkus Reviews

"

Call Your Daughter Home succeeds in painting an atmospheric portrait of the pre-Depression South." -NPR.org

"A mesmerizing story of motherhood and womanhood."-

Deep South

"A mesmerizing Southern tale,

Call Your Daughter Home follows three women intertwined in struggle, unlikely friendship, and ultimately, redemption. Authentic, gripping, a page-turner, yet also a novel filled with language that begs to be savored. This book kept me up late and stayed with me long after I closed the final page." -Lisa Wingate,

New York Times Bestselling Author of

Before We Were Yours

"Deb Spera is a master of voice, a master of deep-diving access to the roiling depths of human identity. These three women, in their fierce struggle for values and self, speak to those struggles in all of us, men and women both.

Call Your Daughter Home is an exhilarating and important book."
- Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize winning author of

A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

"Deb Spera is an amazing talent, and a powerful female voice. She channels the women in this gripping novel - Gertrude, Oretta, and Annie - like someone who has lived inside them. I cannot recommend it strongly enough."
-Mark Bowden,

New York Times and International bestselling author of

Black Hawk Down

"Call Your Daughter Home

is a stunning and welcome addition to Southern Literature. Set in South Carolina during the 20s, it tells a powerful story of women, family, class, and race."
-Chris Offutt, Author of

Country Dark

"A ferociously moving story of motherhood and justice, relayed through a trio of radiantly unforgettable voices. Deb Spera is a conjurer of the first rank."
-Jonathan Miles,

New York Times bestselling author of

Dear American Airlines and

Want Not

"

Call Your Daughter Home is a bold and mesmerizing debut set in a time and place lost to history; a world rescued now by Deb Spera, a talented storyteller. With lush language, Spera illuminates a powerful story of women, of motherhood and survival."
-Natashia Deón, Author of

Grace

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173396808
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/11/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	641,701

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