2006, ISBN: 9780375726576

Hardcover

Random House. Good. 5.94 x 9.13 x 1.22 inches. Paperback. 2006. 422 pages. Text tanned<br>This magnificent novel by one of Americ a's finest writers is the epic of one man's… More...

Random House. Good. 5.94 x 9.13 x 1.22 inches. Paperback. 2006. 422 pages. Text tanned<br>This magnificent novel by one of Americ a's finest writers is the epic of one man's remarkable journey, s et in nineteenth-century America against the background of a vani shing people and a rich way of life. At the age of twelve, under the Wind moon, Will is given a horse, a key, and a map, and sent alone into the Indian Nation to run a trading post as a bound bo y. It is during this time that he grows into a man, learning, as he does, of the raw power it takes to create a life, to find a ho me. In a card game with a white Indian named Featherstone, Will w ins - for a brief moment - a mysterious girl named Claire, and hi s passion and desire for her spans this novel. As Will's destiny intertwines with the fate of the Cherokee Indians - including a C herokee Chief named Bear - he learns how to fight and survive in the face of both nature and men, and eventually, under the Corn T assel Moon, Will begins the fight against Washington City to pres erve the Cherokee's homeland and culture. And he will come to kno w the truth behind his belief that only desire trumps time. Bri lliantly imagined, written with great power and beauty by a maste r of American fiction, Thirteen Moons is a stunning novel about a man's passion for a woman, and how loss, longing and love can sh ape a man's destiny over the many moons of a life. From the Hard cover edition. Editorial Reviews From Bookmarks Magazine Critic s voiced great expectations for Thirteen Moons, coming nearly ten years after Charles Frazier's National Book Award-winning Cold M ountain (1997). Unfortunately, this second novel fails to achieve the same uniform critical acclaim. Certainly, similarities betwe en the two books abound, including a deep appreciation for the So uthern Appalachian landscape, a protagonist embarking on a life-d efining odyssey, an elegiac tone, and swatches of excellent prose . Here, Frazier frames Will's story against America's transition from a frontier society into an industrial nation. Despite some p raise, reviewers generally agree that Thirteen Moons is an airier production (New York Times), with perhaps more clichés, less con vincing characterizations and relationships, and a less wieldy pl ot. What critics do agree on, however, is the excellent period de tail and research that makes Frazier a first-rate chronicler of A merican history. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of t his title. From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Once in a grea t while, all of the elements of an audio book come together to cr eate a near-perfect experience for the listener. Frazier's follow -up to his 1997 National Book Award-winner, Cold Mountain, is ano ther saga of enduring love. It's no small gift to work with great material, and Patton transforms the text into a tale that sounds as if it were meant to be read aloud. It's a story to be told by the fire over the course of a long winter, just as the narrator Will Cooper and his adoptive Cherokee father, Bear, swap yarns wh ile they are hunkered down until the end of the snow season. Patt on's voice has an unidentifiable Southern lilt, which nicely fits a novel vaguely set in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Patto n makes the correct choice not to individualize each character's voice as this is so much Cooper's tale. Bluegrass melodies played by Ryan Scott and Christina Courtin enhance the production. The CDs have been thoughtfully designed, with the numbers circling ea ch disc like a moon. This attention to detail makes for a beautif ul production of a love story that listeners will not put down an d will want to replay. Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or una vailable edition of this title. From Booklist In one of the most anticipated novels of the current publishing season, Frazier, au thor of the widely applauded Cold Mountain (1997), remains true t o the historical fiction vein. The author's second outing finds g rounding in a timeless theme: a grand old man remembering his glo ry days. As a teenager during the James Monroe administration, Wi ll Cooper is sent off, in an indentured situation, into the wilde rness of the Indian Nation to run a trading post. From a mixed-ra ce Indian, he wins a girl with whom he will be besotted for the r est of his life, and his passion will extend into personal involv ement in Indian affairs, to the highest level of politics. Thus F razier also remains faithful to the theme of his previous novel: the odyssey, especially one man's path through trials and tribula tions to be by the side of the woman he loves. And he remains fai thful to a method that marked Cold Mountain in readers' memories: a proliferation of detail about customs and costumes, about food and recreation--pretty much what everything looked and smelled l ike. Unfortunately, for the first fourth of the book, there is to o much detail for the plot to easily bear. But, finally, the char acters are able to step out from behind this blanket of particula rs and incidentals and make the story work. Expect considerable d emand, of course. Brad Hooper Copyright © American Library Associ ation. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Review Gorgeous...Thirteen Moons calls Cold Mountain to mind in its wonder at the natural w orld; its pacificist undercurrents; its dismay at the dismantling of what matters, and its convication that one love, no matter ho w tortured and inexplicable, can be life-defining...fascinating.. .vivid and alive. -Newsweek Thirteen Moons brings this vanished world thrillingly to life... One of the great Native American, an d American stories, and a great gift to all of us, from one of ou r very best writers. -Kirkus Reviews, starred review There are t hings so masterful words can't do them justice. Frazier's writing falls in that category...With Thirteen Moons, he's doing importa nt work filling in the gaps, helping restore the roots, of our kn owledge of our own history. -Asheville Citizen-Times Fascinatin g...Reading Thirteen Moons is an intoxicating experience...This i s 21st-century literary fiction at its very best. -BookPage Thi rteen Moons is rare in many ways and occupies a literary plane of such height that reviewing it is not really salient....Thirteen Moons has the power to inspire great performances from succeeding generations of writers....For those who simply value the literar y experience, Thirteen Moons will provide the immense satisfactio n of taking a literary journey of magnitude. Whether on a plane, in an office or curled in a window seat, readers who absorb Will' s story will find their own lives enriched....Thirteen Moons belo ngs to the ages. -Los Angeles Times Magical...the history lesson in Thirteen Moons is fascinating and moving...You will find much to admire and savor in Thirteen Moons. -USA Today Verdict: A po werhouse second act....a brilliant success...Frazier's second act should convince everyone that he's here to stay. It is a powerfu l, dramatic, often surprising and memorable novel. -Atlanta Journ al Constitution Thirteen Moons is a boisterous, confident novel that draws from the epic tradition... Frazier is a natural storyt eller, and throughout his picaresque tale are grand themes and eu logies -Boston Globe Warm hearted...Frazier is a remarkably meti culous and tasteful writer...Thirteen Moons is a worthy successor to the first novel and a highly readable book. -Seattle Times T o Charles Frazier, words are playthings. Like very few other cont emporary American novelists, he puts them together in such a way that they can transform an otherwise mundane moment, scene or con versation into one that is transcendent....No sophomore jinx here . Reading a Frazier novel is like listening to a fine symphony. H e's a maestro whose pen is his baton, beckoning the best that eac h sentence has to offer. And just as you wouldn't rush a conducto r, you should take the time to savor Frazier's work, to take in e ach thought, to relish the turn of phrase or the imagery of a cra ftsman. -Denver Post Two for two...Here is a book brimming with vivid, adventurous incident...Charles Frazier set himself a daunt ing challenge with this book. He set out to write a historical no vel that was retrospective and meditative, yet still vibrant and immediate with life. Thirteen Moons succeeds in classy fashion. - Raleigh News & Observer If current fiction is anything to go by, it's hard for a novelist to make Santayana's puzzle pieces - lyr icism, comedy, tragedy - fit together, as they do in real life an d real history. Frazier has done it...Thirteen Moons makes you fe el that change that happened so long before our own time, and mak es you mourn it. -Newsday Thirteen Moons is a fitting successor to Cold Mountain...fans of Frazier's debut will be cheered to dis cover that the new book is another compulsively readable work of historical fiction. -St. Louis Post-Dispatch If there is any dou bt that Frazier is an incredibly gifted storyteller - and not jus t a lucky name or a one-hit wonder - it will be put to rest with the publication of Thirteen Moons. Within 10 pages, this long-awa ited new novel bears the reader swiftly out of the waking world i nto its own imagined universe like nothing else published this ye ar. -Minneapolis Star Tribune Forget the sophomore jinx. Frazier demonstrates that Cold Mountain was no one-hit wonder with this fully realized historical novel again set in the South....Again, Frazier shows himself a master of landscape and language, both of ten fresh and surprising in his telling. -Seattle Post-Intelligen cer Thirteen Moons contains achingly beautiful passages of snowf alls, fog-wrapped rivers and moonlit forests. There are ribald an d hilarious events, too, including a description of the Cherokee Booger Dance that is a masterpiece of satire. The love affair bet ween Cooper and Claire threads its way through this pseudo-histor ic epic like a brilliant, scarlet ribbon. There is also a melanch oly refrain that celebrates a wondrous time and place that is gon e and will never return. -Smoky Mountain News Fiction of the hig hest order...Another indelible character. Charles Frazier has a k nack for them. -Charlotte Observer What a story!... Frazier's cr eation, Will Cooper, is utterly charismatic....Frazier's genius l ies in his ability to convey emotions that feel pure and genuine. ..It was worth the wait. -Dayton Daily News From the Hardcover e dition. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edit ion of this title. About the Author Charles Frazier grew up in t he mountains of North Carolina. Cold Mountain, his highly acclaim ed first novel, was an international bestseller, and won the Nati onal Book Award in 1997. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From The Washington Post Cha rles Frazier is an intelligent, occasionally witty author who wri tes incredibly long-winded, sentimental, soporific novels. His fi rst, Cold Mountain, published nine years ago, was the most unlike ly bestseller since Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (19 89), by his fellow North Carolinian Allan Gurganus, and the most improbable National Book Award winner since John O'Hara's Ten Nor th Frederick half a century ago. Now Frazier weighs in with Thirt een Moons, which manages to be even longer and even duller than C old Mountain. No doubt it too will be a huge bestseller. That F razier's success parallels Gurganus's is purely coincidental, but it's just about impossible not to remark upon the oddness of the coincidence. As a rule, the American book-buying public has only a limited appetite for Southern-fried fiction, yet Frazier and G urganus somehow have tapped into it. They deal (Frazier somewhat more skillfully than Gurganus) in what a North Carolina newspaper editor of my long-ago acquaintance used to call shucks-'n'-nubbi ns, which is loosely defined as tiny ears of corn. Frazier's corn is anything but tiny -- more than 400 pages of it in the case of Thirteen Moons -- but it's corn all the same. Reading Frazier is like sitting by the cracker barrel for hour after hour and lis tening to an amiable but impossibly gassy guy who talks real slow , says I reckon a whole lot and never shuts up. His novels have l ittle structure and not much in the way of plot; in Cold Mountain he gave us the wounded Confederate soldier, Inman, limping his w ay back to his gal, Ada, in the North Carolina mountains, and in Thirteen Moons it's the ancient Will Cooper reminiscing about his nine decades and his Cherokee buddies and the gal, Claire, whom he managed to love and lose. He is a far less interesting man tha n Frazier obviously believes him to be, which is a little surpris ing because he's based on a very interesting historical figure. Will Cooper is not William Holland Thomas, Frazier says in an au thor's note, and then coyly adds, though they do share some DNA. Actually, they share a whole lot. William Holland Thomas was born in North Carolina in 1805, was almost immediately orphaned, work ed as a boy in a general store in the mountains, taught himself t he law, worked to secure the right of the Cherokees to remain in their territory as Andrew Jackson sought to drive all Indians wes tward, served in the state senate and organized a company of Cher okee soldiers on behalf of the Confederacy. All of which is exact ly what Will Cooper does in Thirteen Moons; where fact and fictio n part is that Thomas married and had children while Cooper remai ns single, and Thomas's mental condition gradually deteriorated a fter the Civil War while Cooper remains alert, if rather tired, t o the novel's end. In other words, in Thirteen Moons Frazier es sentially has fictionalized history. Nothing wrong with that: hap pens all the time. But the novel provides less imagination and in vention than readers are likely to expect; it reads more like a d utifully researched (check out that author's note) graduate schoo l paper than a work of fiction. It also is chock-a-block with hom espun aphorisms that aren't exactly full of original wisdom: One of the few welcome lessons age teaches is that only desire trumps time, and Grief is a haunting, and Writers can tell any lie that leaps into their heads, and Our worst pain is confined within ou r own skin, and We are not made strong enough to stand up against endle, Random House, 2006, 2.5, Vintage. Good. 5.1 x 0.73 x 8 inches. Paperback. 2004. 336 pages. Cover lightly worn.<br>From David Guterson-bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars-comes this emotionally charged, provocative novel about what happens when a fifteen-year-old gir l becomes an instrument of divine grace. Ann Holmes is a fragile , pill-popping teenaged runaway who receives a visitation from th e Virgin Mary one morning while picking mushrooms in the woods of North Fork, Washington. In the ensuing days the miracle recurs, and the declining logging town becomes the site of a pilgrimage o f the faithful and desperate. As these people flock to Ann-and as Ann herself is drawn more deeply into what is either holiness or madness-Our Lady of the Forest-seamlessly splices the miraculous and the mundane. Editorial Reviews Review Outstanding....Our L ady of the Forest is surely one of this year's best novels.-The P lain Dealer An intense and affecting journey of faith, miracle a nd humanity.-The Denver Post Like a latter-day Dostoyevsky, Gute rson dips into the world of ordinary people....A disturbing novel that challenges us to consider the power and mystery of faith, a nd what role religious belief should play in an unjust world.-Chi cago Tribune Epic....Eccentric, accomplished....[Guterson is] wr iting with more humor than ever before.-The New York Times Book R eview A thoughtful...rumination on faith and human frailty.-Ente rtainment Weekly From the Inside Flap From David Guterson?bestse lling author of Snow Falling on Cedars?comes this emotionally cha rges, provocative novel about what happens when a fifteen-year-ol d girl becomes an instrument of divine grace. Ann Holmes is a fr agile, pill-popping teenaged runaway who receives a visitation fr om the Virgin Mary one morning while picking mushrooms in the woo ds of North Fork, Washington. In the ensuing days the miracle rec urs, and the declining logging town becomes the site of a pilgrim age of the faithful and desperate. As these people flock to Ann?a nd as Ann herself is drawn more deeply into what is either holine ss or madness?Our Lady of the Forest?seamlessly splices the mirac ulous and the mundane. From the Back Cover From David Guterson-- bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars--comes this emotiona lly charged, provocative novel about what happens when a fifteen- year-old girl becomes an instrument of divine grace. Ann Holmes is a fragile, pill-popping teenaged runaway who receives a visita tion from the Virgin Mary one morning while picking mushrooms in the woods of North Fork, Washington. In the ensuing days the mira cle recurs, and the declining logging town becomes the site of a pilgrimage of the faithful and desperate. As these people flock t o Ann--and as Ann herself is drawn more deeply into what is eithe r holiness or madness--Our Lady of the Forest--seamlessly splices the miraculous and the mundane. About the Author David Guterson is the author of a collection of short stories, The Country Ahea d of Us, the Country Behind; Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Ma kes Sense; Snow Falling on Cedars, which won the 1995 PEN/Faulkne r Award, the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association Award, and was an international bestseller; and the national bestseller East of the Mountains. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permission. All right s reserved. I Annunciation NOVEMBER 10-NOVEMBER 13, 1999 The gir l's errand in the forest that day was to gather chanterelle mushr ooms in a bucket to sell in town at dusk. According to her own ac count and the accounts of others in the North Fork Campground who would later be questioned by the diocesan committee, by Father C ollins of Saint Joseph's of North Fork, by the bishop's represent ative, and by reporters covering the purported apparitions--inclu ding tabloid journalists who treated the story like a visitation by Martians or the birth of a two-headed infant--the girl left he r camp before eight o'clock and walked alone into the woods. She wore a sweatshirt with its hood drawn tight. She didn't speak to others of her intentions. Setting out with no direction in mind, she crossed a maple bottom and a copse of alders, traversed a cre ek on a rotten log, then climbed a ridge into deep rain forest an d began searching for mushrooms in earnest. As she went the girl ate potato chips and knelt beside rivulets to drink. She swallow ed the antihistamine that kept her allergies at bay. Other than l ooking for mushrooms, she listened for the lonely music of birds and--she confessed this later to Father Collins--stopped twice to masturbate. It was a still day with no rain or fog and no wind s tirring branches in the trees, the kind of stillness that stops t ime, or seems to, for a hiker. The girl paused often to consider it and to acknowledge her aloneness. She prayed the rosary on her knees--it was Wednesday, November tenth, so she said the Gloriou s Mysteries--before following an elk trail into country she hadn' t visited or perhaps didn't recall, a flat grown up with Douglas firs, choked by blowdowns and vine maple draped with witches'-hai r. Here she lay in a bed of moss and was seized by a dream that s he lay in moss while a shape, a form--a bird of prey, a luminous man--bore down on her from above. Rising, she found chanterelles buried in the interstices of liverworts and in the shadows of wi ndfalls. She cut them low, brushed them clean and set them carefu lly in her bucket. For a long time she picked steadily, moving fa rther into the woods, pleased because it was a rainless day on wh ich she was finding enough mushrooms to justify being there. They drew her on like a spell. At noon she read from her pocket cate chism, then prayed--Give us this day our daily bread--before cros sing herself and eating more potato chips and a package of two ch ocolate donuts. Resting, she heard the note of a thrush, but mute d, faint, and distant. Sunlight now filtered through the trees on an angle through the highest branches and she sought out a broad , strong shaft of it, stippled with boiling dust and litterfall, and lay on her back in its luminous warmth, her face turned towar d heaven. Again she slept and again she dreamed, this time of a f urtive woman in the trees, lit in darkness as though by a spotlig ht, who exhorted her to rise from the ground and continue her sea rch for chanterelles. The girl got up and traveled on. She was l ost now in an incidental way and the two strange dreams disturbed her. Feeling a vague desire again, she put her hand between her legs, aimlessly, still walking. A cold or flu had hold of her, sh e thought. Her allergies and asthma seemed heightened too. Her pe riod had started. The newspapers reported that her name was Ann Holmes, after her maternal grandmother, who died from sepsis and pneumonia a week before Ann was born. Ann and her mother, fifteen at Ann's birth, had lived with Ann's grandfather, a long-haul tr ucker, a man with complicated gambling debts, in a series of rent al homes. The newspapers, though, did not uncover that her mother 's boyfriend, a methamphetamine addict, had raped Ann opportunist ically beginning when she was fourteen. Afterward he would lie be side her with an expression of antic, contorted suffering etching his hairless long face. Sometimes he cried or apologized, but mo re often he threatened to kill her. When Ann was fifteen she too k a driver's education class, which she missed only once, on a Fr iday afternoon, in order to have an abortion. Eight months later she expelled her second fetus into the toilet at a minimart on th e heels of a bout with nausea. On her sixteenth birthday she boug ht a two-door car, dented or crumpled in more than one panel, for three hundred and fifty dollars earned foraging for truffles and chanterelles. The next morning, she drove away. Ann was diminut ive, sparrow-boned, and when she covered her head with her sweats hirt hood it was easy to mistake her for a boy of twelve, fair-sk inned and dreamy. She often wheezed asthmatically, sneezed feebly , blew her nose, and coughed against her fist or palm. On most mo rnings her jeans were wet with the rain or dew transferred from t he fronds of ferns and her hands looked pink and raw. She smelled of wood smoke, leaves and rank clothes and had lived for a month in the North Fork Campground in a canvas tent by the river. Othe rs living there told reporters that she'd rigged up a plastic tar p with twine and often sat under it against a log, reading by fir elight. Most described her as silent and subdued, though not unpl easant or inspiring unease, not threatening in her estrangement. Those who saw her in the woods that fall--other mushroom gatherer s, mostly, but also several elk and deer hunters and once a Stins on Company timber cruiser--were struck by her inconsequence and b y the wariness of her eyes in shadow underneath the drawn hood. A mushroom picker named Carolyn Greer who lived in a van in the N orth Fork Campground claimed that on an evening in mid-October sh e had eaten dinner with Ann Holmes, sharing soup, bread and canne d peaches and speaking with her of present matters but never of t hemselves, their histories. Ann had not had much to say. Mostly s he stirred her soup pot, listened, and stared at the flames of th e fire. She did indicate a concern for her car, whose transmissio n no longer allowed her to shift gears or to travel anywhere. The car's battery had petered out, and its windshield and windows ap peared permanently clouded with an opaque, viscous vapor. It sat beside her canvas tent, gathering fallen cedar needles, both seat s loaded with plastic bags, paper sacks, and cardboard boxes stuf fed with her belongings. Carolyn didn't tell the bishop's repres entative that while the soup was simmering they got high together . Primarily, it was nobody's business. Furthermore, it implicated her too. Carolyn indulged in pot regularly. It surprised her tha t Ann, after a few tokes, did not become effusive and talkative, like most stoned people around a campfire. Instead she became eve n more reserved, more hermetic and taciturn. Her face disappeared inside the hood of her sweatshirt. She spoke when spoken to, ter se but polite, and poked incessantly at the wood coals. Her only subject was her dead car. Stranded, Ann had resorted to the coun ty bus, which stopped at a convenience store a half mile from the campground and dropped her in front of the MarketTime in North F ork for eighty-five cents, one way. She paid, the county driver r eported, with exact change, sometimes using pennies, and replied in kind when he greeted her. Once he commented on the mushrooms i n her bucket, on their number, size, and golden hue, and she gave him some loosely wrapped in newspaper she found at the back of t he bus. On the highway, she slept with her head against the windo w. Frequently she read from a paperback book he eventually discer ned was a catechism. When she got off in town she said thank you or good-bye, her hood still drawn around her face. A half dozen times she accepted a ride from a mushroom and brush picker named Steven Mossberger, who wore a dense beard, Coke-bottle glasses, a nd a wool cap pulled low on his temples. Seeing her carrying her bucket of chanterelles and walking the road one afternoon, Mossbe rger rolled down the window of his pick-up, explained that he liv ed in the campground as she did, that he picked mushrooms just li ke her, then asked if she wanted a lift. Ann refused him without affront. No, thanks, she said. I'm okay. The next time he saw he r, in late October, he pulled over at dusk in a modest rain and s he accepted without hesitating. When he leaned across to push aja r the door, she got in smelling of wet clothes and mushrooms, set the bucket of chanterelles on her lap, and said, It's a little w et out. Where are you from? Mossberger asked. Down in Oregon. N ot far from the coast. What's your name? She gave him her first . He told her his full name. He put his hand out to shake hers an d she slipped her hand into his. He wanted to believe, afterward , that this moment was freighted with spiritual meaning, that in taking her hand he felt the hand of God, and he described it that way to the diocesan committee and to the bishop's representative --a hand that was more than other hands, he said, connecting him with something deeper than his own life--but in fact, he understo od privately, what he felt was probably little more than the smal l thrill a man gets from shaking hands with a woman. In North Fo rk, Ann sold her mushrooms to Bob Frame, a mechanic who worked on logging equipment and ran his mushroom business on the side. Gar rulous and jocular most of the time, he spoke with an instinctive brevity and disdain to the first journalist who entreated him. T he girl's mushrooms, Frame said, were always meticulously field c leaned, and her bucket contained few culls. Only once, on an even ing of bitter rain, did she drink the coffee he kept about as a g ratuity for his pickers. For a few minutes she sat by the electri c heater, sipping from a Styrofoam cup, watching as he layered mu shrooms in newspaper and weighed the day's take on a scale. It se emed to him, working close to her, that she hadn't bathed or laun dered her clothing in a long time, maybe weeks. He did recall tha t she kept her pay in a leather pouch worn around her neck, not i n the pocket of her jeans. Her shoes, he noted, were well-worn, t he sole of one of them separating from the upper so that her damp wool sock showed through. Even in his shed she wore her sweatshi rt hood and kept her hands in her sweatshirt pockets. Frame didn 't tell the journalist that she could give no social security num ber when he requested one for his records. He'd paid her cash and noted nothing in his books of recompense made to an Ann Holmes, and because of that small worrisome omission he was angry with hi mself for having said anything about Ann Holmes at all. He spoke to no more journalists afterward and proclaimed in town that the media circus perpetually surrounding the visionary was a spectacl e he couldn't participate in and still live with himself. In trut h it was the specter of an IRS audit that made him afraid to spea k of her, though he did tell his wife, swearing her to secrecy, t hat once when the girl freed her pouch from her sweatshirt she al so inadvertently brought forth a necklace bearing a crucifix, whi ch Bob said glowed a brilliant gold. From Frame's shed Ann carri ed her bucket to MarketTime and bought a few things each evening. One checker recalled her proclivity for sugar wafers, small cart ons of chocolate milk, deli burritos, and Starbursts. No one else reme, Vintage, 2004, 2.5<

2019, ISBN: 9780375726576

Bloom Books. Good. 5.19 x 1.5 x 8 inches. Paperback. 2012. 514 pages. <br>And in this quiet moment as I close my eyes, spent and sated, I think I'm in the eye of the storm. And… More...

Bloom Books. Good. 5.19 x 1.5 x 8 inches. Paperback. 2012. 514 pages. <br>And in this quiet moment as I close my eyes, spent and sated, I think I'm in the eye of the storm. And in spite of all he's said, and what he hasn't said, I don't think I have ever been so happy. When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a ma n who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly, i nnocent Ana is startled to realize she wants this man and, despit e his enigmatic reserve, finds she is desperate to get close to h im. Unable to resist Ana's quiet beauty, wit, and independent spi rit, Grey admits he wants her, too--but on his own terms. Shocke d yet thrilled by Grey's singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. F or all the trappings of success--his multinational businesses, hi s vast wealth, his loving family--Grey is a man tormented by demo ns and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks o n a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey's secrets and explores her own dark desires. An Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller More than 165 Million Copies Sold Wo rldwide One of 100 Great Reads in the Great American Read 133 Weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List This book is inten ded for mature audiences. Editorial Reviews Review A GoodReads Choice Awards Finalist for Best Romance In a class by itself. - Entertainment Weekly About the Author E L James is an incurabl e romantic and a self-confessed fangirl. After twenty-five years of working in television, she decided to pursue a childhood dream and write stories that readers could take to their hearts. The r esult was the controversial and sensuous romance Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Fr eed. In 2015, she published the #1 bestseller Grey, the story of Fifty Shades of Grey from the perspective of Christian Grey, and in 2017, the chart-topping Darker, the second part of the Fifty S hades story from Christian's point of view. She followed with the #1 New York Times bestseller, The Mister in 2019. Her books have been published in fifty languages and have sold more than 165 mi llion copies worldwide. E L James has been recognized as one of Time magazine's Most Influential People in the World and Publishe rs Weekly's Person of the Year. Fifty Shades of Grey stayed on th e New York Times bestseller list for 133 consecutive weeks. Fifty Shades Freed won the Goodreads Choice Award (2012), and Fifty Sh ades of Grey was selected as one of the 100 Great Reads, as voted by readers, in PBS's The Great American Read (2018). Darker was long-listed for the 2019 International DUBLIN Literary Award. Sh e was a producer on each of the three Fifty Shades movies, which made more than a billion dollars at the box office. The third ins tallment, Fifty Shades Freed, won the People's Choice Award for D rama in 2018. E L James is blessed with two wonderful sons and li ves with her husband, the novelist and screenwriter Niall Leonard , and their West Highland terriers in the leafy suburbs of West L ondon. Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. C HAPTER ONE I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror. Dam n my hairit just won't behave, and damn Katherine Kavanagh for be ing ill and subjecting me to this ordeal. I should be studying fo r my final exams, which are next week, yet here I am trying to br ush my hair into submission. I must not sleep with it wet. I must not sleep with it wet. Reciting this mantra several times, I att empt, once more, to bring it under control with the brush. I roll my eyes in exasperation and gaze at the pale, brown-haired girl with blue eyes too big for her face staring back at me, and give up. My only option is to restrain my wayward hair in a ponytail a nd hope that I look semi-presentable. Kate is my roommate, and s he has chosen today of all days to succumb to the flu. Therefore, she cannot attend the interview she'd arranged to do, with some mega-industrialist tycoon I've never heard of, for the student ne wspaper. So I have been volunteered. I have final exams to cram f or and one essay to finish, and I'm supposed to be working this a fternoon, but notoday I have to drive 165 miles to downtown Seatt le in order to meet the enigmatic CEO of Grey Enterprises Holding s, Inc. As an exceptional entrepreneur and major benefactor of ou r university, his time is extraordinarily preciousmuch more preci ous than minebut he has granted Kate an interview. A real coup, s he tells me. Damn her extracurricular activities. Kate is huddle d on the couch in the living room. Ana, I'm sorry. It took me ni ne months to get this interview. It will take another six to resc hedule, and we'll both have graduated by then. As the editor, I c an't blow this off. Please, Kate begs me in her rasping, sore thr oat voice. How does she do it? Even ill she looks gamine and gorg eous, strawberry blond hair in place and green eyes bright, altho ugh now red rimmed and runny. I ignore my pang of unwelcome sympa thy. Of course I'll go, Kate. You should get back to bed. Would you like some NyQuil or Tylenol? NyQuil, please. Here are the qu estions and my digital recorder. Just press record here. Make not es, I'll transcribe it all. I know nothing about him, I murmur, trying and failing to suppress my rising panic. The questions wi ll see you through. Go. It's a long drive. I don't want you to be late. Okay, I'm going. Get back to bed. I made you some soup to heat up later. I stare at her fondly. Only for you, Kate, would I do this. I will. Good luck. And thanks, Anaas usual, you're my lifesaver. Gathering my backpack, I smile wryly at her, then he ad out the door to the car. I cannot believe I have let Kate talk me into this. But then Kate can talk anyone into anything. She'l l make an exceptional journalist. She's articulate, strong, persu asive, argumentative, beautifuland she's my dearest, dearest frie nd. The roads are clear as I set off from Vancouver, Washington, toward Interstate 5. It's early, and I don't have to be in Seatt le until two this afternoon. Fortunately, Kate has lent me her sp orty Mercedes CLK. I'm not sure Wanda, my old VW Beetle, would ma ke the journey in time. Oh, the Merc is a fun drive, and the mile s slip away as I hit the pedal to the metal. My destination is t he headquarters of Mr. Grey's global enterprise. It's a huge twen ty-story office building, all curved glass and steel, an architec t's utilitarian fantasy, with GREY HOUSE written discreetly in st eel over the glass front doors. It's a quarter to two when I arri ve, greatly relieved that I'm not late as I walk into the enormou sand frankly intimidatingglass, steel, and white sandstone lobby. Behind the solid sandstone desk, a very attractive, groomed, bl onde young woman smiles pleasantly at me. She's wearing the sharp est charcoal suit jacket and white shirt I have ever seen. She lo oks immaculate. I'm here to see Mr. Grey. Anastasia Steele for K atherine Kavanagh. Excuse me one moment, Miss Steele. She arches her eyebrow as I stand self-consciously before her. I'm beginnin g to wish I'd borrowed one of Kate's formal blazers rather than w orn my navy-blue jacket. I have made an effort and worn my one an d only skirt, my sensible brown knee-length boots, and a blue swe ater. For me, this is smart. I tuck one of the escaped tendrils o f my hair behind my ear as I pretend she doesn't intimidate me. Miss Kavanagh is expected. Please sign in here, Miss Steele. You 'll want the last elevator on the right, press for the twentieth floor. She smiles kindly at me, amused no doubt, as I sign in. S he hands me a security pass that has visitor very firmly stamped on the front. I can't help my smirk. Surely it's obvious that I'm just visiting. I don't fit in here at all. Nothing changes. I in wardly sigh. Thanking her, I walk over to the bank of elevators a nd past the two security men who are both far more smartly dresse d than I am in their well-cut black suits. The elevator whisks m e at terminal velocity to the twentieth floor. The doors slide op en, and I'm in another large lobbyagain all glass, steel, and whi te sandstone. I'm confrontd by another desk of sandstone and anot her young blonde woman, this time dressed impeccably in black and white, who rises to greet me. Miss Steele, could you wait here, please? She points to a seated area of white leather chairs. Be hind the leather chairs is a spacious glass-walled meeting room w ith an equally spacious dark wood table and at least twenty match ing chairs around it. Beyond that, there is a floor-to-ceiling wi ndow with a view of the Seattle skyline that looks out through th e city toward the Sound. It's a stunning vista, and I'm momentari ly paralyzed by the view. Wow. I sit down, fish the questions fr om my backpack, and go through them, inwardly cursing Kate for no t providing me with a brief biography. I know nothing about this man I'm about to interview. He could be ninety or he could be thi rty. The uncertainty is galling, and my nerves resurface, making me fidget. I've never been comfortable with one-on-one interviews , preferring the anonymity of a group discussion where I can sit inconspicuously at the back of the room. To be honest, I prefer m y own company, reading a classic British novel, curled up in a ch air in the campus library. Not sitting twitching nervously in a c olossal glass-and-stone edifice. I roll my eyes at myself. Get a grip, Steele. Judging from the building, which is too clinical a nd modern, I guess Grey is in his forties: fit, tanned, and fair- haired to match the rest of the personnel. Another elegant, flaw lessly dressed blonde comes out of a large door to the right. Wha t is it with all the immaculate blondes? It's like Stepford here. Taking a deep breath, I stand up. Miss Steele? the latest blond e asks. Yes, I croak, and clear my throat. Yes. There, that soun ded more confident. Mr. Grey will see you in a moment. May I tak e your jacket? Oh, please. I struggle out of the jacket. Have y ou been offered any refreshment? Umno. Oh dear, is Blonde Number One in trouble? Blonde Number Two frowns and eyes the young wom an at the desk. Would you like tea, coffee, water? she asks, turn ing her attention back to me. A glass of water. Thank you, I mur mur. Olivia, please fetch Miss Steele a glass of water. Her voic e is stern. Olivia scoots up and scurries to a door on the other side of the foyer. My apologies, Miss Steele, Olivia is our new intern. Please be seated. Mr. Grey will be another five minutes. Olivia returns with a glass of iced water. Here you go, Miss St eele. Thank you. Blonde Number Two marches over to the large de sk, her heels clicking and echoing on the sandstone floor. She si ts down, and they both continue their work. Perhaps Mr. Grey ins ists on all his employees being blonde. I'm wondering idly if tha t's legal, when the office door opens and a tall, elegantly dress ed, attractive African American man with short dreads exits. I ha ve definitely worn the wrong clothes. He turns and says through the door, Golf this week, Grey? I don't hear the reply. He turns , sees me, and smiles, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners. Ol ivia has jumped up and called the elevator. She seems to excel at jumping from her seat. She's more nervous than me! Good afterno on, ladies, he says as he departs through the sliding door. Mr. Grey will see you now, Miss Steele. Do go through, Blonde Number Two says. I stand rather shakily, trying to suppress my nerves. G athering up my backpack, I abandon my glass of water and make my way to the partially open door. You don't need to knockjust go i n. She smiles kindly. I push open the door and stumble through, tripping over my own feet and falling headfirst into the office. Double crapme and my two left feet! I am on my hands and knees in the doorway to Mr. Grey's office, and gentle hands are around me, helping me to stand. I am so embarrassed, damn my clumsiness. I have to steel myself to glance up. Holy cowhe's so young. Mis s Kavanagh. He extends a long-fingered hand to me once I'm uprigh t. I'm Christian Grey. Are you all right? Would you like to sit? So youngand attractive, very attractive. He's tall, dressed in a fine gray suit, white shirt, and black tie with unruly dark copp er-colored hair and intense, bright gray eyes that regard me shre wdly. It takes a moment for me to find my voice. Um. Actually I mutter. If this guy is over thirty, then I'm a monkey's uncle. I n a daze, I place my hand in his and we shake. As our fingers tou ch, I feel an odd exhilarating shiver run through me. I withdraw my hand hastily, embarrassed. Must be static. I blink rapidly, my eyelids matching my heart rate. Miss Kavanagh is indisposed, so she sent me. I hope you don't mind, Mr. Grey. And you are? His voice is warm, possibly amused, but it's difficult to tell from h is impassive expression. He looks mildly interested but, above al l, polite. Anastasia Steele. I'm studying English literature wit h Kate, um . . . Katherine . . . um . . . Miss Kavanagh, at WSU V ancouver. I see, he says simply. I think I see the ghost of a sm ile in his expression, but I'm not sure. Would you like to sit? He waves me toward an L-shaped white leather couch. His office i s way too big for just one man. In front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, there's a modern dark wood desk that six people could co mfortably eat around. It matches the coffee table by the couch. E verything else is whiteceiling, floors, and walls, except for the wall by the door, where a mosaic of small paintings hang, thirty -six of them arranged in a square. They are exquisitea series of mundane, forgotten objects painted in such precise detail they lo ok like photographs. Displayed together, they are breathtaking. A local artist. Trouton, says Grey when he catches my gaze. The y're lovely. Raising the ordinary to extraordinary, I murmur, dis tracted both by him and the paintings. He cocks his head to one s ide and regards me intently. I couldn't agree more, Miss Steele, he replies, his voice soft, and for some inexplicable reason I f ind myself blushing. Apart from the paintings, the rest of the office is cold, clean, and clinical. I wonder if it reflects the personality of the Adonis who sinks gracefully into one of the wh ite leather chairs opposite me. I shake my head, disturbed at the direction of my thoughts, and ret, Bloom Books, 2012, 2.5, Vintage. Good. 5.1 x 0.73 x 8 inches. Paperback. 2004. 336 pages. Cover lightly worn.<br>From David Guterson-bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars-comes this emotionally charged, provocative novel about what happens when a fifteen-year-old gir l becomes an instrument of divine grace. Ann Holmes is a fragile , pill-popping teenaged runaway who receives a visitation from th e Virgin Mary one morning while picking mushrooms in the woods of North Fork, Washington. In the ensuing days the miracle recurs, and the declining logging town becomes the site of a pilgrimage o f the faithful and desperate. As these people flock to Ann-and as Ann herself is drawn more deeply into what is either holiness or madness-Our Lady of the Forest-seamlessly splices the miraculous and the mundane. Editorial Reviews Review Outstanding....Our L ady of the Forest is surely one of this year's best novels.-The P lain Dealer An intense and affecting journey of faith, miracle a nd humanity.-The Denver Post Like a latter-day Dostoyevsky, Gute rson dips into the world of ordinary people....A disturbing novel that challenges us to consider the power and mystery of faith, a nd what role religious belief should play in an unjust world.-Chi cago Tribune Epic....Eccentric, accomplished....[Guterson is] wr iting with more humor than ever before.-The New York Times Book R eview A thoughtful...rumination on faith and human frailty.-Ente rtainment Weekly From the Inside Flap From David Guterson?bestse lling author of Snow Falling on Cedars?comes this emotionally cha rges, provocative novel about what happens when a fifteen-year-ol d girl becomes an instrument of divine grace. Ann Holmes is a fr agile, pill-popping teenaged runaway who receives a visitation fr om the Virgin Mary one morning while picking mushrooms in the woo ds of North Fork, Washington. In the ensuing days the miracle rec urs, and the declining logging town becomes the site of a pilgrim age of the faithful and desperate. As these people flock to Ann?a nd as Ann herself is drawn more deeply into what is either holine ss or madness?Our Lady of the Forest?seamlessly splices the mirac ulous and the mundane. From the Back Cover From David Guterson-- bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars--comes this emotiona lly charged, provocative novel about what happens when a fifteen- year-old girl becomes an instrument of divine grace. Ann Holmes is a fragile, pill-popping teenaged runaway who receives a visita tion from the Virgin Mary one morning while picking mushrooms in the woods of North Fork, Washington. In the ensuing days the mira cle recurs, and the declining logging town becomes the site of a pilgrimage of the faithful and desperate. As these people flock t o Ann--and as Ann herself is drawn more deeply into what is eithe r holiness or madness--Our Lady of the Forest--seamlessly splices the miraculous and the mundane. About the Author David Guterson is the author of a collection of short stories, The Country Ahea d of Us, the Country Behind; Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Ma kes Sense; Snow Falling on Cedars, which won the 1995 PEN/Faulkne r Award, the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association Award, and was an international bestseller; and the national bestseller East of the Mountains. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permission. All right s reserved. I Annunciation NOVEMBER 10-NOVEMBER 13, 1999 The gir l's errand in the forest that day was to gather chanterelle mushr ooms in a bucket to sell in town at dusk. According to her own ac count and the accounts of others in the North Fork Campground who would later be questioned by the diocesan committee, by Father C ollins of Saint Joseph's of North Fork, by the bishop's represent ative, and by reporters covering the purported apparitions--inclu ding tabloid journalists who treated the story like a visitation by Martians or the birth of a two-headed infant--the girl left he r camp before eight o'clock and walked alone into the woods. She wore a sweatshirt with its hood drawn tight. She didn't speak to others of her intentions. Setting out with no direction in mind, she crossed a maple bottom and a copse of alders, traversed a cre ek on a rotten log, then climbed a ridge into deep rain forest an d began searching for mushrooms in earnest. As she went the girl ate potato chips and knelt beside rivulets to drink. She swallow ed the antihistamine that kept her allergies at bay. Other than l ooking for mushrooms, she listened for the lonely music of birds and--she confessed this later to Father Collins--stopped twice to masturbate. It was a still day with no rain or fog and no wind s tirring branches in the trees, the kind of stillness that stops t ime, or seems to, for a hiker. The girl paused often to consider it and to acknowledge her aloneness. She prayed the rosary on her knees--it was Wednesday, November tenth, so she said the Gloriou s Mysteries--before following an elk trail into country she hadn' t visited or perhaps didn't recall, a flat grown up with Douglas firs, choked by blowdowns and vine maple draped with witches'-hai r. Here she lay in a bed of moss and was seized by a dream that s he lay in moss while a shape, a form--a bird of prey, a luminous man--bore down on her from above. Rising, she found chanterelles buried in the interstices of liverworts and in the shadows of wi ndfalls. She cut them low, brushed them clean and set them carefu lly in her bucket. For a long time she picked steadily, moving fa rther into the woods, pleased because it was a rainless day on wh ich she was finding enough mushrooms to justify being there. They drew her on like a spell. At noon she read from her pocket cate chism, then prayed--Give us this day our daily bread--before cros sing herself and eating more potato chips and a package of two ch ocolate donuts. Resting, she heard the note of a thrush, but mute d, faint, and distant. Sunlight now filtered through the trees on an angle through the highest branches and she sought out a broad , strong shaft of it, stippled with boiling dust and litterfall, and lay on her back in its luminous warmth, her face turned towar d heaven. Again she slept and again she dreamed, this time of a f urtive woman in the trees, lit in darkness as though by a spotlig ht, who exhorted her to rise from the ground and continue her sea rch for chanterelles. The girl got up and traveled on. She was l ost now in an incidental way and the two strange dreams disturbed her. Feeling a vague desire again, she put her hand between her legs, aimlessly, still walking. A cold or flu had hold of her, sh e thought. Her allergies and asthma seemed heightened too. Her pe riod had started. The newspapers reported that her name was Ann Holmes, after her maternal grandmother, who died from sepsis and pneumonia a week before Ann was born. Ann and her mother, fifteen at Ann's birth, had lived with Ann's grandfather, a long-haul tr ucker, a man with complicated gambling debts, in a series of rent al homes. The newspapers, though, did not uncover that her mother 's boyfriend, a methamphetamine addict, had raped Ann opportunist ically beginning when she was fourteen. Afterward he would lie be side her with an expression of antic, contorted suffering etching his hairless long face. Sometimes he cried or apologized, but mo re often he threatened to kill her. When Ann was fifteen she too k a driver's education class, which she missed only once, on a Fr iday afternoon, in order to have an abortion. Eight months later she expelled her second fetus into the toilet at a minimart on th e heels of a bout with nausea. On her sixteenth birthday she boug ht a two-door car, dented or crumpled in more than one panel, for three hundred and fifty dollars earned foraging for truffles and chanterelles. The next morning, she drove away. Ann was diminut ive, sparrow-boned, and when she covered her head with her sweats hirt hood it was easy to mistake her for a boy of twelve, fair-sk inned and dreamy. She often wheezed asthmatically, sneezed feebly , blew her nose, and coughed against her fist or palm. On most mo rnings her jeans were wet with the rain or dew transferred from t he fronds of ferns and her hands looked pink and raw. She smelled of wood smoke, leaves and rank clothes and had lived for a month in the North Fork Campground in a canvas tent by the river. Othe rs living there told reporters that she'd rigged up a plastic tar p with twine and often sat under it against a log, reading by fir elight. Most described her as silent and subdued, though not unpl easant or inspiring unease, not threatening in her estrangement. Those who saw her in the woods that fall--other mushroom gatherer s, mostly, but also several elk and deer hunters and once a Stins on Company timber cruiser--were struck by her inconsequence and b y the wariness of her eyes in shadow underneath the drawn hood. A mushroom picker named Carolyn Greer who lived in a van in the N orth Fork Campground claimed that on an evening in mid-October sh e had eaten dinner with Ann Holmes, sharing soup, bread and canne d peaches and speaking with her of present matters but never of t hemselves, their histories. Ann had not had much to say. Mostly s he stirred her soup pot, listened, and stared at the flames of th e fire. She did indicate a concern for her car, whose transmissio n no longer allowed her to shift gears or to travel anywhere. The car's battery had petered out, and its windshield and windows ap peared permanently clouded with an opaque, viscous vapor. It sat beside her canvas tent, gathering fallen cedar needles, both seat s loaded with plastic bags, paper sacks, and cardboard boxes stuf fed with her belongings. Carolyn didn't tell the bishop's repres entative that while the soup was simmering they got high together . Primarily, it was nobody's business. Furthermore, it implicated her too. Carolyn indulged in pot regularly. It surprised her tha t Ann, after a few tokes, did not become effusive and talkative, like most stoned people around a campfire. Instead she became eve n more reserved, more hermetic and taciturn. Her face disappeared inside the hood of her sweatshirt. She spoke when spoken to, ter se but polite, and poked incessantly at the wood coals. Her only subject was her dead car. Stranded, Ann had resorted to the coun ty bus, which stopped at a convenience store a half mile from the campground and dropped her in front of the MarketTime in North F ork for eighty-five cents, one way. She paid, the county driver r eported, with exact change, sometimes using pennies, and replied in kind when he greeted her. Once he commented on the mushrooms i n her bucket, on their number, size, and golden hue, and she gave him some loosely wrapped in newspaper she found at the back of t he bus. On the highway, she slept with her head against the windo w. Frequently she read from a paperback book he eventually discer ned was a catechism. When she got off in town she said thank you or good-bye, her hood still drawn around her face. A half dozen times she accepted a ride from a mushroom and brush picker named Steven Mossberger, who wore a dense beard, Coke-bottle glasses, a nd a wool cap pulled low on his temples. Seeing her carrying her bucket of chanterelles and walking the road one afternoon, Mossbe rger rolled down the window of his pick-up, explained that he liv ed in the campground as she did, that he picked mushrooms just li ke her, then asked if she wanted a lift. Ann refused him without affront. No, thanks, she said. I'm okay. The next time he saw he r, in late October, he pulled over at dusk in a modest rain and s he accepted without hesitating. When he leaned across to push aja r the door, she got in smelling of wet clothes and mushrooms, set the bucket of chanterelles on her lap, and said, It's a little w et out. Where are you from? Mossberger asked. Down in Oregon. N ot far from the coast. What's your name? She gave him her first . He told her his full name. He put his hand out to shake hers an d she slipped her hand into his. He wanted to believe, afterward , that this moment was freighted with spiritual meaning, that in taking her hand he felt the hand of God, and he described it that way to the diocesan committee and to the bishop's representative --a hand that was more than other hands, he said, connecting him with something deeper than his own life--but in fact, he understo od privately, what he felt was probably little more than the smal l thrill a man gets from shaking hands with a woman. In North Fo rk, Ann sold her mushrooms to Bob Frame, a mechanic who worked on logging equipment and ran his mushroom business on the side. Gar rulous and jocular most of the time, he spoke with an instinctive brevity and disdain to the first journalist who entreated him. T he girl's mushrooms, Frame said, were always meticulously field c leaned, and her bucket contained few culls. Only once, on an even ing of bitter rain, did she drink the coffee he kept about as a g ratuity for his pickers. For a few minutes she sat by the electri c heater, sipping from a Styrofoam cup, watching as he layered mu shrooms in newspaper and weighed the day's take on a scale. It se emed to him, working close to her, that she hadn't bathed or laun dered her clothing in a long time, maybe weeks. He did recall tha t she kept her pay in a leather pouch worn around her neck, not i n the pocket of her jeans. Her shoes, he noted, were well-worn, t he sole of one of them separating from the upper so that her damp wool sock showed through. Even in his shed she wore her sweatshi rt hood and kept her hands in her sweatshirt pockets. Frame didn 't tell the journalist that she could give no social security num ber when he requested one for his records. He'd paid her cash and noted nothing in his books of recompense made to an Ann Holmes, and because of that small worrisome omission he was angry with hi mself for having said anything about Ann Holmes at all. He spoke to no more journalists afterward and proclaimed in town that the media circus perpetually surrounding the visionary was a spectacl e he couldn't participate in and still live with himself. In trut h it was the specter of an IRS audit that made him afraid to spea k of her, though he did tell his wife, swearing her to secrecy, t hat once when the girl freed her pouch from her sweatshirt she al so inadvertently brought forth a necklace bearing a crucifix, whi ch Bob said glowed a brilliant gold. From Frame's shed Ann carri ed her bucket to MarketTime and bought a few things each evening. One checker recalled her proclivity for sugar wafers, small cart ons of chocolate milk, deli burritos, and Starbursts. No one else reme, Vintage, 2004, 2.5<

2004, ISBN: 9780375726576

Vintage. Good. 5.1 x 0.73 x 8 inches. Paperback. 2004. 336 pages. Cover lightly worn.<br>From David Guterson-bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars-comes this emotionally cha… More...

Vintage. Good. 5.1 x 0.73 x 8 inches. Paperback. 2004. 336 pages. Cover lightly worn.<br>From David Guterson-bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars-comes this emotionally charged, provocative novel about what happens when a fifteen-year-old gir l becomes an instrument of divine grace. Ann Holmes is a fragile , pill-popping teenaged runaway who receives a visitation from th e Virgin Mary one morning while picking mushrooms in the woods of North Fork, Washington. In the ensuing days the miracle recurs, and the declining logging town becomes the site of a pilgrimage o f the faithful and desperate. As these people flock to Ann-and as Ann herself is drawn more deeply into what is either holiness or madness-Our Lady of the Forest-seamlessly splices the miraculous and the mundane. Editorial Reviews Review Outstanding....Our L ady of the Forest is surely one of this year's best novels.-The P lain Dealer An intense and affecting journey of faith, miracle a nd humanity.-The Denver Post Like a latter-day Dostoyevsky, Gute rson dips into the world of ordinary people....A disturbing novel that challenges us to consider the power and mystery of faith, a nd what role religious belief should play in an unjust world.-Chi cago Tribune Epic....Eccentric, accomplished....[Guterson is] wr iting with more humor than ever before.-The New York Times Book R eview A thoughtful...rumination on faith and human frailty.-Ente rtainment Weekly From the Inside Flap From David Guterson?bestse lling author of Snow Falling on Cedars?comes this emotionally cha rges, provocative novel about what happens when a fifteen-year-ol d girl becomes an instrument of divine grace. Ann Holmes is a fr agile, pill-popping teenaged runaway who receives a visitation fr om the Virgin Mary one morning while picking mushrooms in the woo ds of North Fork, Washington. In the ensuing days the miracle rec urs, and the declining logging town becomes the site of a pilgrim age of the faithful and desperate. As these people flock to Ann?a nd as Ann herself is drawn more deeply into what is either holine ss or madness?Our Lady of the Forest?seamlessly splices the mirac ulous and the mundane. From the Back Cover From David Guterson-- bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars--comes this emotiona lly charged, provocative novel about what happens when a fifteen- year-old girl becomes an instrument of divine grace. Ann Holmes is a fragile, pill-popping teenaged runaway who receives a visita tion from the Virgin Mary one morning while picking mushrooms in the woods of North Fork, Washington. In the ensuing days the mira cle recurs, and the declining logging town becomes the site of a pilgrimage of the faithful and desperate. As these people flock t o Ann--and as Ann herself is drawn more deeply into what is eithe r holiness or madness--Our Lady of the Forest--seamlessly splices the miraculous and the mundane. About the Author David Guterson is the author of a collection of short stories, The Country Ahea d of Us, the Country Behind; Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Ma kes Sense; Snow Falling on Cedars, which won the 1995 PEN/Faulkne r Award, the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association Award, and was an international bestseller; and the national bestseller East of the Mountains. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permission. All right s reserved. I Annunciation NOVEMBER 10-NOVEMBER 13, 1999 The gir l's errand in the forest that day was to gather chanterelle mushr ooms in a bucket to sell in town at dusk. According to her own ac count and the accounts of others in the North Fork Campground who would later be questioned by the diocesan committee, by Father C ollins of Saint Joseph's of North Fork, by the bishop's represent ative, and by reporters covering the purported apparitions--inclu ding tabloid journalists who treated the story like a visitation by Martians or the birth of a two-headed infant--the girl left he r camp before eight o'clock and walked alone into the woods. She wore a sweatshirt with its hood drawn tight. She didn't speak to others of her intentions. Setting out with no direction in mind, she crossed a maple bottom and a copse of alders, traversed a cre ek on a rotten log, then climbed a ridge into deep rain forest an d began searching for mushrooms in earnest. As she went the girl ate potato chips and knelt beside rivulets to drink. She swallow ed the antihistamine that kept her allergies at bay. Other than l ooking for mushrooms, she listened for the lonely music of birds and--she confessed this later to Father Collins--stopped twice to masturbate. It was a still day with no rain or fog and no wind s tirring branches in the trees, the kind of stillness that stops t ime, or seems to, for a hiker. The girl paused often to consider it and to acknowledge her aloneness. She prayed the rosary on her knees--it was Wednesday, November tenth, so she said the Gloriou s Mysteries--before following an elk trail into country she hadn' t visited or perhaps didn't recall, a flat grown up with Douglas firs, choked by blowdowns and vine maple draped with witches'-hai r. Here she lay in a bed of moss and was seized by a dream that s he lay in moss while a shape, a form--a bird of prey, a luminous man--bore down on her from above. Rising, she found chanterelles buried in the interstices of liverworts and in the shadows of wi ndfalls. She cut them low, brushed them clean and set them carefu lly in her bucket. For a long time she picked steadily, moving fa rther into the woods, pleased because it was a rainless day on wh ich she was finding enough mushrooms to justify being there. They drew her on like a spell. At noon she read from her pocket cate chism, then prayed--Give us this day our daily bread--before cros sing herself and eating more potato chips and a package of two ch ocolate donuts. Resting, she heard the note of a thrush, but mute d, faint, and distant. Sunlight now filtered through the trees on an angle through the highest branches and she sought out a broad , strong shaft of it, stippled with boiling dust and litterfall, and lay on her back in its luminous warmth, her face turned towar d heaven. Again she slept and again she dreamed, this time of a f urtive woman in the trees, lit in darkness as though by a spotlig ht, who exhorted her to rise from the ground and continue her sea rch for chanterelles. The girl got up and traveled on. She was l ost now in an incidental way and the two strange dreams disturbed her. Feeling a vague desire again, she put her hand between her legs, aimlessly, still walking. A cold or flu had hold of her, sh e thought. Her allergies and asthma seemed heightened too. Her pe riod had started. The newspapers reported that her name was Ann Holmes, after her maternal grandmother, who died from sepsis and pneumonia a week before Ann was born. Ann and her mother, fifteen at Ann's birth, had lived with Ann's grandfather, a long-haul tr ucker, a man with complicated gambling debts, in a series of rent al homes. The newspapers, though, did not uncover that her mother 's boyfriend, a methamphetamine addict, had raped Ann opportunist ically beginning when she was fourteen. Afterward he would lie be side her with an expression of antic, contorted suffering etching his hairless long face. Sometimes he cried or apologized, but mo re often he threatened to kill her. When Ann was fifteen she too k a driver's education class, which she missed only once, on a Fr iday afternoon, in order to have an abortion. Eight months later she expelled her second fetus into the toilet at a minimart on th e heels of a bout with nausea. On her sixteenth birthday she boug ht a two-door car, dented or crumpled in more than one panel, for three hundred and fifty dollars earned foraging for truffles and chanterelles. The next morning, she drove away. Ann was diminut ive, sparrow-boned, and when she covered her head with her sweats hirt hood it was easy to mistake her for a boy of twelve, fair-sk inned and dreamy. She often wheezed asthmatically, sneezed feebly , blew her nose, and coughed against her fist or palm. On most mo rnings her jeans were wet with the rain or dew transferred from t he fronds of ferns and her hands looked pink and raw. She smelled of wood smoke, leaves and rank clothes and had lived for a month in the North Fork Campground in a canvas tent by the river. Othe rs living there told reporters that she'd rigged up a plastic tar p with twine and often sat under it against a log, reading by fir elight. Most described her as silent and subdued, though not unpl easant or inspiring unease, not threatening in her estrangement. Those who saw her in the woods that fall--other mushroom gatherer s, mostly, but also several elk and deer hunters and once a Stins on Company timber cruiser--were struck by her inconsequence and b y the wariness of her eyes in shadow underneath the drawn hood. A mushroom picker named Carolyn Greer who lived in a van in the N orth Fork Campground claimed that on an evening in mid-October sh e had eaten dinner with Ann Holmes, sharing soup, bread and canne d peaches and speaking with her of present matters but never of t hemselves, their histories. Ann had not had much to say. Mostly s he stirred her soup pot, listened, and stared at the flames of th e fire. She did indicate a concern for her car, whose transmissio n no longer allowed her to shift gears or to travel anywhere. The car's battery had petered out, and its windshield and windows ap peared permanently clouded with an opaque, viscous vapor. It sat beside her canvas tent, gathering fallen cedar needles, both seat s loaded with plastic bags, paper sacks, and cardboard boxes stuf fed with her belongings. Carolyn didn't tell the bishop's repres entative that while the soup was simmering they got high together . Primarily, it was nobody's business. Furthermore, it implicated her too. Carolyn indulged in pot regularly. It surprised her tha t Ann, after a few tokes, did not become effusive and talkative, like most stoned people around a campfire. Instead she became eve n more reserved, more hermetic and taciturn. Her face disappeared inside the hood of her sweatshirt. She spoke when spoken to, ter se but polite, and poked incessantly at the wood coals. Her only subject was her dead car. Stranded, Ann had resorted to the coun ty bus, which stopped at a convenience store a half mile from the campground and dropped her in front of the MarketTime in North F ork for eighty-five cents, one way. She paid, the county driver r eported, with exact change, sometimes using pennies, and replied in kind when he greeted her. Once he commented on the mushrooms i n her bucket, on their number, size, and golden hue, and she gave him some loosely wrapped in newspaper she found at the back of t he bus. On the highway, she slept with her head against the windo w. Frequently she read from a paperback book he eventually discer ned was a catechism. When she got off in town she said thank you or good-bye, her hood still drawn around her face. A half dozen times she accepted a ride from a mushroom and brush picker named Steven Mossberger, who wore a dense beard, Coke-bottle glasses, a nd a wool cap pulled low on his temples. Seeing her carrying her bucket of chanterelles and walking the road one afternoon, Mossbe rger rolled down the window of his pick-up, explained that he liv ed in the campground as she did, that he picked mushrooms just li ke her, then asked if she wanted a lift. Ann refused him without affront. No, thanks, she said. I'm okay. The next time he saw he r, in late October, he pulled over at dusk in a modest rain and s he accepted without hesitating. When he leaned across to push aja r the door, she got in smelling of wet clothes and mushrooms, set the bucket of chanterelles on her lap, and said, It's a little w et out. Where are you from? Mossberger asked. Down in Oregon. N ot far from the coast. What's your name? She gave him her first . He told her his full name. He put his hand out to shake hers an d she slipped her hand into his. He wanted to believe, afterward , that this moment was freighted with spiritual meaning, that in taking her hand he felt the hand of God, and he described it that way to the diocesan committee and to the bishop's representative --a hand that was more than other hands, he said, connecting him with something deeper than his own life--but in fact, he understo od privately, what he felt was probably little more than the smal l thrill a man gets from shaking hands with a woman. In North Fo rk, Ann sold her mushrooms to Bob Frame, a mechanic who worked on logging equipment and ran his mushroom business on the side. Gar rulous and jocular most of the time, he spoke with an instinctive brevity and disdain to the first journalist who entreated him. T he girl's mushrooms, Frame said, were always meticulously field c leaned, and her bucket contained few culls. Only once, on an even ing of bitter rain, did she drink the coffee he kept about as a g ratuity for his pickers. For a few minutes she sat by the electri c heater, sipping from a Styrofoam cup, watching as he layered mu shrooms in newspaper and weighed the day's take on a scale. It se emed to him, working close to her, that she hadn't bathed or laun dered her clothing in a long time, maybe weeks. He did recall tha t she kept her pay in a leather pouch worn around her neck, not i n the pocket of her jeans. Her shoes, he noted, were well-worn, t he sole of one of them separating from the upper so that her damp wool sock showed through. Even in his shed she wore her sweatshi rt hood and kept her hands in her sweatshirt pockets. Frame didn 't tell the journalist that she could give no social security num ber when he requested one for his records. He'd paid her cash and noted nothing in his books of recompense made to an Ann Holmes, and because of that small worrisome omission he was angry with hi mself for having said anything about Ann Holmes at all. He spoke to no more journalists afterward and proclaimed in town that the media circus perpetually surrounding the visionary was a spectacl e he couldn't participate in and still live with himself. In trut h it was the specter of an IRS audit that made him afraid to spea k of her, though he did tell his wife, swearing her to secrecy, t hat once when the girl freed her pouch from her sweatshirt she al so inadvertently brought forth a necklace bearing a crucifix, whi ch Bob said glowed a brilliant gold. From Frame's shed Ann carri ed her bucket to MarketTime and bought a few things each evening. One checker recalled her proclivity for sugar wafers, small cart ons of chocolate milk, deli burritos, and Starbursts. No one else reme, Vintage, 2004, 2.5<

2003, ISBN: 9780375726576

Paperback

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Advance Reading Copy. Trade Paperback. Very Good. 5x0x8. Signed by author. Advance reader's edition. Signed by author without inscription on title p… More...

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Advance Reading Copy. Trade Paperback. Very Good. 5x0x8. Signed by author. Advance reader's edition. Signed by author without inscription on title page. A bit smoky. 2003 Trade Paperback. "From the best-selling author of Snow Falling on Cedars -- an emotionally charged, provocative new novel about a teenage girl who claims to see the Virgin Mary. Ann Holmes seems an unlikely candidate for revelation. A sixteen-year-old runaway, she is an itinerant mushroom picker who lives in a tent. But on a November afternoon, in the foggy woods of North Fork, Washington, the Virgin comes to her, clear as day. Father Collins -- a young priest new to North Fork -- finds Ann disturbingly alluring. But it is up to him to evaluate -- impartially -- the veracity of Ann’s sightings: Are they delusions, or a true calling to God? As word spreads and thousands, including the press, converge upon the town, Carolyn Greer, a smart-talking fellow mushroomer, becomes Ann’s disciple of sorts, as well as her impromptu publicity manager. And Tom Cross, an embittered logger who’s been out of work since his son was paralyzed in a terrible accident, finds in Ann’s visions a last chance for redemption for both himself and his son. As Father Collins searches his own soul and Ann’s, as Carolyn struggles with her less than admirable intentions, as Tom alternates between despair and hope, Our Lady of the Forest tells a suspenseful, often wryly humorous, and deeply involving story of faith at a contemporary crossroads., Alfred A. Knopf, 2003, 3<

2004, ISBN: 9780375726576

[ Edition: Reprint ]. Fair Condition. [ No Hassle 30 Day Returns ][ Ships Daily ] [ Underlining/Highlighting: NONE ] [ Writing: NONE ] Publisher: Vintage Pub Date: 7/27/2004 Binding:… More...

[ Edition: Reprint ]. Fair Condition. [ No Hassle 30 Day Returns ][ Ships Daily ] [ Underlining/Highlighting: NONE ] [ Writing: NONE ] Publisher: Vintage Pub Date: 7/27/2004 Binding: Paperback Pages: 336, 2<