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Twenty years ago, Kaye Gibbons’s
first novel, Ellen Foster, was published to wide and
continued acclaim. Eudora Welty called Gibbons “a stunning
new writer.” The New York Times hailed the novel as
“filled with lively humor, compassion and integrity...
Ellen Foster may be the most trustworthy character in recent
fiction.” Since then, Ellen Foster has become a classic
American coming-of-age novel.
Now Ellen Foster has more to tell us, and
though she’s older and wiser, her voice is unmistakable.
The Life All Around Me By Ellen Foster stands on its
own as an unforgettable portrait of a redoubtable adolescent
making herself up out of whole cloth. Strengthened by adversity
and blessed with enough intelligence to design a salvation
for herself, Ellen has found a new mother and settled into
a permanent home, though she still carries the burden of her
mother’s death and her father’s abuse. While she
holds fast to the shreds of her childhood, she negotiates
her way into a larger world and sets her sights high—on
Harvard. “I believe that anything is possible if you
have the combination of love for what you’re doing and
the will to sit down and not get up until it’s done.”
How Ellen does what she needs to do is
a story of love, fear, grief, need, hope, wit, and ingenuity.
With a singular mix of perspicacity, naïveté, and compassion,
she draws us into her life and makes us fall in love with
her all over again
Kaye Gibbons is the author of seven
bestselling novels. Her first novel, Ellen Foster,
was awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy
and Institute of Arts and Letters and a special citation from
the Ernest Hemingway Foundation. That novel, as well as A
Virtuous Woman, was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club.
She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.
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