I loved, loved, loved this book. One of my favorite characters in a long time. Desperately sad, it tells the story of a young girl in appalachia after the civil war. Much of her story is unbelivably tragic - hunger, death, and unending struggle. Yet, the writing is so clean, beautiful and rich that the story sings, and is surprisingly uplifting. The central character Julie Harmon is a simple woman - uneducated, unquestioning. She is the person that her entire family leans on to run the farm when her father takes ill, and later, the center of her family when she marries. She has an amazing spirit - full of faith, and with an enduring power and will to survive, and to love, despite amazing challenges and hardship. She takes joy in the quiet of nature, the smell of chestnuts, and the taste of fresh ham, even when they are hungry, and she has only 32 cents left in the world.

Disclaimer - I listened to this book on CDs and the narrator was awful. Over and over she sounded like she honestly was a 1st grader learning how to read. Short. Choppy. Words. Built. Into. Sentences. She said. Hank said. I said. Over and over. It was a dreadful audio and I will never listen to another read by her. Now on to the book - which I actually have a paperback copy of that I’m promptly putting in recycling bin because I can’t in good conscience donate it for anyone else to drag through. Mansplaining circa 1890. Julie was not fleshed out beyond being poor, poorly educated, and hard working. Hank turns from sweet farm boy to abusive and awful seemingly overnight. Yet the tale goes on for Julie hoping for a better day and completely glossing over every episode of Hanks abusive behavior. Let’s just stop for a moment and ask any woman— during birth did you feel a “pleasure of stretching...pleasure so intense you couldn’t name it”? Yeah. That’s a direct quote from this nonsense. Anyhow. I’m aghast Oprah picked it for her book club and sorry I wasted hours listening to it. Hard pass on this one. Read anything by Charles Frazier instead.

I added this book to my to read list when it was recommended by a woman I met on a plane. She said it was the best book she ever read.

I listened to this book. The dialog was repetitive. The plot was depressing. I don't recommend it.

I have reminisced about this story many times and am debating a rare re-read as I loved the feelings that I experienced the first time that I read it. I would like to experience it again, and see if at this stage in my life I still feel the same. I would recommend this to both women and men alike if they are at all interested in the hard times that faced those who were living in the end of the nineteenth century. The love story is present, but the story of survival and overcoming are what you carry with you at the end.

All the stars!

Julie Harmon is an inspiring, likable character who keeps going even while enduring one tragedy after another. Morgan has said that he struggled to find her voice, but I think it's clear that he did find it because she is realistic and memorable. Morgan's writing is beautiful and at times poetic, which is not surprising given his background as a poet. The scene with Julie, her father, and brother in the woods at night is amazingly well done, especially Julie's realization that the natural world can be strikingly beautiful even as something awful is happening. The character of Hank is interesting and I got a pretty good sense of him, but I wish we had understood a bit more of his true personality and where he was coming from. The scenes with his mother give us some insight, but more might have been helpful. While the religious parts in the second half of the book didn't bother me at all, Julie's interest in religion seemed to come out of nowhere to some extent, even though it's maybe hinted at in the beginning of the book. There are a lot of lengthy descriptions of Julie's hard work throughout the book. Although at times they can start to get tedious and there's a "well-researched" feel to them, they do help paint the picture of just how hard working and tough she was. In any event, despite some minor issues, I loved Morgan's descriptions and imagery and I came away really impressed with this book.

Flat, one dimensional characters set in a dreary depressing novel. This is the furthest thing from southern literature imaginable. Stereotypical hillbilly language and a husband who beats his wife. No one respects the young wife who appears to be the only character who can make a living, bury the dead, and fight a house fire. I hated this book and will never read anything by this author again. I'm pretty sure he despises women too. Colossal waste of time.

Quite interesting.

This book had few redeeming characteristics. I don't recommend it for anybody. The only reason that I gave it a rating of 2 is because it was well written and because I felt compelled to keep reading to see what would happen to the heroine, hoping that something good would come her way. I read the book in one sitting, 3.5 hours.

Robert Morgan tried to write this period novel from a woman's point of view, I assume, since the main character is a woman who is telling her own story. The result of his effort is that it seemed to me that he was telling his version of how a woman should feel about and react to a whole bunch of bad things that happened to her and her family.

The book was a total downer, wrought with nothing but sadness, extreme hard work resulting in bad outcomes, and death. She married in her mid-teens to an 18-year-old self-centered, thoughtless, and inconsiderate boy who didn't want to be told anything by anybody else, and he would decide when and if he would do something/anything. And according to the author, all this was acceptable, though, because she could make herself and her husband feel better by having good sex. The book was not explicit, or titillating, at all but the author was still able to impart this information he deemed important.

Seriously, this book made me feel depressed for a couple of days, so don't read it unless you need a reality check about life at the turn of the 20th century.

There are two premises espoused in this book: 1) in order to have a successful marriage, the woman must subjugate her strengths, personality, perseverance, to her abusive, shiftless husband in order to protect his fragile ego and to safeguard against added abuse; and 2) once your abusive, shiftless husband finds god, he will no longer be abusive and shiftless. I hate this book for putting the burden of a "good" marriage on the woman and perpetuating the myths that if the woman just keeps her place of subservience (and her husband finds god) all will be well. I wouldn't recommend this tripe to anyone.

Just OK. There is a sequel but I have little desire to continue this storyline. Set in the early 1900's, it tells the story of Julie, our protagonist, and her struggles eeking out a life in the rural Carolinas. She marries young, to a relatively immature, quick to anger young man. Nothing good can come of that, but she is an amazingly strong character and we are left at the end of the book to believe he finally shapes up and becomes worthy of his marriage. Overall a little depressing, but I believe life during the turn of the 20th century was not a bowl of cherries and the author did a good job depicting that.

I enjoyed reading this story. Life in the Appalachian mountains for the very poor at the turn of the century (1899 0 1900) is almost unimaginable. This is a story about a young couple in the first year of their marriage. Their struggle to survive and make it to the next day is quite vividly told. While I find the story depressing, I couldn't stop reading it either..