Valentine
Book description
A top ten New York Times bestseller. With the haunting emotional power of American Dirt and the atmospheric suspense of Where the Crawdads Sing: a compulsive debut novel that explores the aftershock of a brutal crime on the women of a small Texas oil town.
'The very definition of a…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Valentine as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Valentine handles some very heavy topics beautifully.
Many of the characters are connected by only one thread: they are women trying to survive in West Texas in the early 1970s. It centers around a brutal incident and the quest to find justice for a Mexican teenage girl who was violently assaulted.
Throughout the story we get such an intimate look at these women’s lives. I felt like I knew them. I felt like I was sitting right next to them in their kitchen or on their front porch.
These women were all hardened by the trials life had thrown at…
From Lisa's list on badass women (that do not take place during WWII).
I am drawn to books about strong women fighting against social norms and the society that limits them. Elizabeth Wetmore’s, Valentine, shows us how challenging this fight can be, how frightening, and how it requires choices some women aren’t willing to make. In 1976, in a small town in Texas, fourteen-year-old Gloria Ramirez is violently attacked. When she drags herself to Mary Rose’s front porch, her story forces the women in Odessa to confront their own brutal experiences. Told from multiple perspectives, Whitmore’s skillful, raw prose draws us into the lives of each woman, leaving us wondering what it…
From Serena's list on powerful female protagonists.
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