Choices

When Melinda Kregg, a young southern belle, witnesses the bloody Kentucky mining strikes of the 1930s, her innocence is shattered. This saga chronicles her joys, sorrows, and ministrations to the social wound on her journey through the maelstrom of the twentieth century. A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. Awarded the 1995 Lillian Smith Book Award.

Rezensionen (4)

Publisher's Weekly-Rezension

Written with urgency, conviction and grace, this keenly observed story of one woman's passage through the storms of the 20th century is Settle's best book since the novels in the Beulah Quintet. Her protagonist, born Melinda Mason Kregg in the early 1900s into a genteel, wealthy Richmond family, is a frivolous society deb until her father's death shocks her into social activism. Now the widowed Lady Dunston, at 83 she lies dying at her villa on an island off Italy, reflecting on her life. The first time Melinda makes a choice about the direction of her life is in 1931, when she joins the Red Cross and is sent to Harlan, Ky., where striking coal miners are being starved and brutalized by greedy mine owners. In Spain, she drives an ambulance through the carnage of the Civil War and experiences the futility of idealism when the major nations of the world cynically support Franco. In England, she endures the privation and danger of WWII, while her physician husband, also a veteran of the International Brigade, literally works himself to death. Back in America, she is drawn into the racial unrest of her native South through the heroism of the youthful freedom riders. Melinda's commitment to humanitarian principles and social justice is a gradual process; it's decency of character and a sensitive conscience that force her to eschew the safe, conventional path and take the harder road. Settle textures her narrative with a remarkable knowledge of period detail and an artist's eye for scenes that become emblazoned on the mind: desperate miners' families meeting in a church; a mass of Spanish refugees being strafed by Franco's airplanes; a London neighborhood destroyed by a V-2 bomb; a trio of polite Southerners preparing to lynch a white youth who has ``betrayed'' their side. Distilling the essence of some of our century's most pressing political and social issues, she humanizes them through complex, appealing characters. The theme is larger than one woman's life, but it's animated and made memorable by that very conjunction of the personal with the tides of historical events. This is a solid literary novel with sure sales potential. Author tour. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus-Rezension

Wearing its liberal heart on its sleeve, the 13th novel by National Book Award-winner Settle has the same historic sweep and personalized politics as her acclaimed Beulah Quintet (Charley Bland, 1989, etc.). Settle's protagonist is a woman of the century, a tough lady who, confronted by the major events of her time, feels the need to stand up and be counted. Her story begins in Richmond, Virginia, where Melinda Kregg slowly realizes there's more to life than debutante balls. After her father's death, Melinda devotes her exemplary life to assuaging her guilt over inheriting his ``blood money,'' made from investments in coal mines. As a Red Cross volunteer, she ventures to Kentucky, where she rebels against bureaucratic neutrality during a strike because it punishes innocent children. With no illusions about manipulative communists and fellow travelers--especially the lecherous Theodore Dreiser, who makes a cameo here--Melinda is changed by the murder of her party member lover. Run out of town, she eventually lands in Manhattan, where she adds auto mechanics to her diverse skills--all of which come in handy when she sets off for the Spanish Civil War. Amid a number of melodramatic gestures, Melinda meets her future husband, an English baronet who later becomes a saintly doctor in London and a pioneer of National Health. In Spain, Melinda adopts a speechless orphan. Years later, after her husband's death and her adopted daughter's move to the States, Melinda returns home for her last great struggle, the fight for civil rights. Again, she finds herself mothering an orphan, a young black man whom she supports through college and law school. Settle covers a lot of ground in her breathless account of romantic idealists in a tumultuous century. A counter-myth of the southern belle, this entertaining and fully imagined re-creation would make a great miniseries. (Author tour)

Booklist-Rezension

From social debutante to gutsy old lady, Melinda Kregg Dunston has led a life no one would have expected of her. Born into high society in Richmond, Virginia, she decides early on that one's own wants and desires should take a backseat to helping others. As a young woman--this is 1931--she throws over the traces to help the poor coal miners of Kentucky. It doesn't take long--she's a quick study--before she embroils herself in political and social activism, to which she devotes the rest of her long life, an involvement that takes her to such places as Spain in the throes of civil war, England while it was being bombed by the Nazis, and Mississippi during the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. We should all hope to look back on a life as meaningful as hers; what makes her not only admirable but likable is Settle's experienced, nimble, and gracious hand at configuring a hero who, at the same time, is a very real person. Settle has a legion of admirers whose esteem will grow with the appearance of her latest novel. --Brad Hooper

Library Journal-Rezension

Southern belle Melinda rejects gentility for a life of commitment. From the author of the National Book Award Winner Blood Ties (LJ 8/77). (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Verfügbar:*

Bound With These Titles