The Girl from Charnelle (William Morrow 2006/Harper Perennial 2007) deals with the same family of characters in 1960, focusing on the middle daughter, Laura Tate, who is left to take care of her father and brothers after the mother of the family mysteriously disappears. Set in the fictional Texas Panhandle town of Charnelle, against the backdrop of the Kennedy/Nixon presidential election, the novel examines the intellectual and erotic coming of age of a young woman, as well as the legacy of parental abandonment.
The Girl from Charnelle was on several 2006 "best books" lists. It was an Editor's Choice selection of the Historical Novel Society and was named a Southwest Book of the Year, a School Library Journal Best Adult Book for High School Students, and a Mississippi Press/Gulf Coast Live Top Three Books of the Year. It was also a finalist for the James Jones First Novel Award.
Reviewers called it “a resonant first novel” (Entertainment Weekly), “a strong, complex story from a promising new literary voice” (Kirkus Reviews), “a debut impossible to put down until the dramatic and realistic conclusion” (Library Journal, starred review), and “a marvelously written and well-paced, deeply affecting novel that ought to bring the writer several more awards” (Houston Chronicle).
Read more about this topic: K. L. Cook
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