Thursday, October 1, 2020

Book Review - The Daughters of Erietown; Connie Schultz

 

Daughters of Erietown; Connie Schultz 
Random House Audio - 2020 (read by Cassandra Campbell)


Beginning in 1957 in a small town in Ohio and continuing for the better part of the century (1950s - 1990s), The Daughters of Erietown is a multi-generational story about women and their families.  Most of the residents are ordinary everyday people. The women are stay at home mothers and the men hold blue collar jobs to support their families.  There's a neighborhood bar and some friendly neighbors.

Brick McGinty and Ellie and young and in love. Brick grew up with an abusive father but, he is a basketball star and looking forward to promising future with a full scholarship to college. Ellie, raise by her grandparents, thinks about becoming a nurse but, it's an unplanned pregnancy that chases this young couple's dreams away.

This debut novel quickly drew me in to the lives of these of these characters. The writing was quite good with strong female characters and dialogue that felt genuine. I liked the way the author depicted small-town life. Seeing how the lives of the women had changed over the years was a highlight of this novel.  I did think this book was unnecessarily long (almost 500 pages in print and over 14 hours on audio); IMO it could have benefitted by some additional editing.  Overall, I was happy that I read/listened to this one. Cassandra Campbell narrated the audio which was very well done.

RATING - 4/5 stars

15 comments:

  1. Sounds good! Thanks for sharing because I hadn't heard of it before.

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  2. It does sound really good, it's fun when the characters are so real.

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    1. Yes, I liked that you could envision what the characters were going through.

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  3. Strong female characters and good dialogue sounds good. Whew! Over fourteen hours on audio would be too much, but reading 500 pages wouldn't be so bad.

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  4. I like multigenerational stories, but I'm not big on long books. I know, I know, that sounds contradictory, doesn't it? I think I may give it a try since your review focused on great characters, and that's something I love.

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  5. Connie Schultz is a good writer of news, opinion, nonfiction, so it's interesting that she has tried her hand at fiction and this does sound like a worthy debut.

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    1. Yes, this is her first novel and worth reading. I like her husband, Senator Sherrod Brown.

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  6. It sure does Vicki, especially back in that time period before birth control pills.

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  7. I often wonder if any book really needs to be over 500 pages. This sounds like a lovely book where the reader gets to know the couple, but also the town.

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  8. I didn't realize the author is married to Sen. Brown. I know JoAnn liked this one too ... I may try it eventually but 500 pages does sound too much.

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  9. I enjoy audiobooks read by Cassandra Campbell and I've heard good things about this book. I think it was JoAnn's review that brought it to my attention. It's in my audio library and I'll get to it later this year. I really don't mind long audios -- I'm currently listening to Joe Hill's *The Fireman* and it's 22+ hours long!

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  10. We're reading this for our November book group. Connie and her husband Sherrod Brown (both local, I was so excited to see them at the movie theatre last year:)) are doing a joint talk on FB if you're interested. https://attend.cuyahogalibrary.org/event/4565359

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