ST.
MARTIN'S PRESS Hardcover
January 2008, Trade Paper March
2009
Becky:
The
Life and Loves of Becky Thatcher
by
Lenore Hart
It's
1910, and the renowned novelist Mark Twain has
passed away -- "gone with Halley's comet"-- just the time he always
said he'd pass away.
Now Becky Thatcher would like to set the record straight: she was never
the weeping little ninny that Twain made her out to be in his famous
popular novel. Yes, she was
Tom Sawyer's childhood sweetheart, but the real
story of their love for each other, and the terrible secret that
finally tore them apart,
never quite made it into Twain's books. Becky had her own reasons for
rejecting Tom, and marrying his cousin Sid . . . as all women have
their reasons.
Bold and brave beyond the expectations of her
sex, in a time of war and westward expansion,
this wildly conflicted wife and mother struggles to reconcile her
fierce and independent spirit
with the limitations of traditional Nineteenth-century expectations for
women. She seeks
fulfillment, passion, and a measure of independence. She's haunted by
the lies she's told, and the men she's loved and lost -- or betrayed.
As she marries and moves from steamboat-era Hannibal to a Civil War
battlefield to the mining towns of the Sierra Nevada to Barbary Coast
San Francisco, she tries to find meaning, and her own place in a
changing, post-war world. Even as she tries, less successfully, to
forget and leave behind the maddening, sweet-talking, and very
unreliable Tom Sawyer. If that's at all possible. . . .
A READ-IT-FIRST.COM SELECTION
See the Reading Group Guide, additional reading,
more information, and author interview here.
Hardcover -- $24.95. ISBN 978-0312-37327-6.
Trade Paperback - $14.95. ISBN
978-0-312-53965-8.
"In
this old-fashioned, newfangled adventure story, Hart re-imagines and
expands on Becky Thatcher . . . in an episodic style not so different
from Twain's, she presents the "real-life"adventures
of this tenacious
and clever survivor. This is a hefty, vigorous, and engaging work with
nothing dainty about it!"
--
Sheri
Reynolds, The Rapture of Canaan
and Firefly Cloak
"In liberating Becky, Hart liberates
our longing to cut loose historical women, to let them out of their
corsets . . . and hand them a pistol instead of a frying pan and see
what they'll do."
-- Los Angeles Times
"Lenore Hart writes a novel with the
grace of a poet. Her command of time, place, and language is
enviable. Becky is a marvelous journey readers will so enjoy."
-- Steve
Berry, The Amber Room and The
Templar Legacy
"Those curious to know the fate of
Tom Sawyer's puppy love will enjoy this deft sequel, which finds
crybaby Becky all grown up -- and a firebrand."
-- Good Housekeeping Magazine
Buy Becky in Hardback!
Buy Becky in Trade Paper!
© Copyright 2008 Lenore
Hart
