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Overview
After sustaining terrible burns from a household accident as a young girl, Finch Nobles refuses the pity of her hometown. The brave and feisty loner finds comfort in visiting her father’s cemetery, where she soon discovers that she can hear the voices of those buried underground. When she begins to speak to them, their answers echo around her in a remarkable chorus of regrets, explanations, and insights. A wonderfully wrought amalgam of Steinbeck, Faulkner, Spoon River Anthology, and Our Town, A Gracious Plenty is a masterful tale not soon forgotten.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781630262648 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Turner Publishing Company |
| Publication date: | 10/02/2012 |
| Pages: | 216 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.80(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A Gracious Plenty
By Sheri Reynolds
Turner
Copyright © 2012 Sheri ReynoldsAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9781618580313
“Ain’t you got no respect for the Dead?” I holler. “Get outta here. Ain’t you got no shame?”
But I’m wasting my breath. The children are running before I open my mouth, squealing and hightailing it around tombstones and trees, racing for the edge of the cemetery. A boy without a shirt dusts his belly on the ground and scrapes his back wiggling fast beneath the fence.
“You hateful old witch,” he cries, but not until he’s in the shrubbery on the other side. “You damn-fool witch.”
I raise my stick and shake it at him.
By the time I get to the plot where they were playing, all that’s left is a striped tank top and a bottle half-full of soda that they were throwing like a ball. They’ve cracked the plastic, and the liquid drizzles out dark. Fizz runs down my arm as I pick it up.
I apologize to Sarah Andrews Barfield, 1897-1949, and wipe the soda off her dingy stone with that child’s shirt. It doesn’t look like rain. Ants will come.
I stuff the shirt through the hole in the fence and then find a brick and a few fallen limbs to block off the space until I can get it patched.
On the way back to the house, I stop to visit with Ma and Papa for a spell. Overhead the wind creaks oak, and beneath me, thick grass bends. Tomorrow I will bring out the lawnmower, but today I catch a nap between them, the way I did when I was small, when their hands were warm and could touch me back.
I have been old all my life, my face like a piece of wood left out in snow and wind.
I was four when it happened. Papa had gone to get the grave diggers and bring them home to eat. He did that sometimes when it was hot and they were busy. Ma didn't mind cooking for a crowd.
But she had that day’s meal fixed and waiting. She was already cutting apples for the next day’s pie, and I was riding the broom in circles around the table.
“You getting too rowdy, Finch,” Ma said. “Calm down.”
“I’m playing circus,” I told her. “I'm a pony rider.”
“You’ve worn that pony out,” she said. “Let him rest.”
So I plopped down on the floor with the broom pony, ran my hand over the bristles, and pretended to rub his mane. Then I decided to get the pony some water. I needed a bowl. Ma had a bowl, but it was full of apples.
“I need a bowl to put some water in. My pony’s thirsty.”
“Give him some apple peels instead,” Ma said. “He'll like that even better.” She was good at playing along.
I was sitting beside the brown paper bag where Ma was dropping the peels. I reached in, grabbed a curled strand of red, and fed it to the pony. Then I looked up and saw the handle of the pot on the stove.
“You still want some water?” I asked the pony, and when he said yes, I reached for the handle of that pot. I reached for the shine.
“Lord, Lizzie,” Papa whispered later, “ain’t right for this child to be widowed by her own skin.”
Ma shivered off oxygen soap, hard and brown, mixed it with honey and flour, and tried to paste my skin back on. She broke aloe fingers and doused my face, my shoulder and arm. She whispered, “I told her to stay away from that stove,” her voice choking out. She brushed my hair away from the places where skin bubbled up.
They thought I was asleep, but I wasn’t. I was dazed and drunk on honey water, lost in the buzzing of the burn. I thought they were washing my hair, but it was just blisters breaking and Ma crying, and water spilling from the cup they held to my mouth. I thought I might wash away.
Continues...
Excerpted from A Gracious Plenty by Sheri Reynolds Copyright © 2012 by Sheri Reynolds. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
What People are Saying About This
A triumph of story, voice, and character...stunning and authentic....A beautiful book.
— Author of The River Beyond the World
“Ms. Reynolds’s poetic gifts are uncommonly powerful.” —The New York Times
“Reynolds . . . is a gifted writer with a deceptively simple style and a keen ear for dialogue.” —The Boston Globe
“The newest and most exciting voice to emerge in contemporary Southern fiction.” —The San Francisco Bay Guardian
“Reynolds is in top form with these beautifully drawn, flawed characters.” —School Library Journal
“Simple prose rich with subtext, convincing dialogue, and a fascinating protagonist combine to produce a heartstring-plucker that’s explicit, tender, sad, and hopeful.” —Publishers Weekly
Reading Group Guide
1. As a child, Finch tries to hide her scarred face, covering it with mud from the river, and often dreams of waking up with a normal face. How do her parents' reactions to her scars affect her own? Why does she say that after her mother dies, "There was nothing left to prove. I could go ahead and admit how ugly I was"? [p.42]
2. Five years before she died, Lucy had legally changed her name from "Lucille Armour" to "Lucy Armageddon." What do the names -- both the one she was born with and the one she adopted -- reflect about her image of herself? What significance do the names of the other characters -- from Finch Nobles to William Blott -- have in the novel?
3. The Mediator who welcomes the newcomers to the cemetery says, "The Dead coax the natural world along. We're responsible for weather and tides and seasons. For rebirth and retribution.... But if you want to know real enlightenment, you've got to lose the weight... We're talking about burdens and secrets..." Does Finch's acceptance of her scars parallel the freedom that comes with the Dead's letting go of secrets and burdens? Is Finch being entirely honest when she says, "You can't hide burn scars and there's no point in trying. I live in a world without secrets."? [p.4]
4. Is Finch's "harassment" of Lucy's mother justifiable? Do the requests of the Dead take precedence over the needs of the living to protect themselves?
5. Is Finch herself guilty of judging people by appearances and superficial behavior, as Lucy suggests [p. 56], not only in regard to her reaction to William Blott's "nursing" the infant Marcus, but also in her treatment of Lois Armour, Leonard Livingston, andReba Baker?
6. Finch says, "You can look at a scar and see hurt or you can look at a scar and seeing healing." [p. 66]. How does Finch regard her own scars? Do Lucy's scars, the results of self-inflicted wounds, represent hurt or healing?
7. When the group of teenage girls misbehaves in the cemetery [p. 77], Finch initially reacts with anger but starts to enjoy the encounter as she relates the stories of the people buried in various graves. Why do the stories make the girls less fearful? How does the incident mark a change in Finch's attitudes toward the living?
8. When Finch and Leonard investigate William Blott's property, they stand in front of a mirror wearing some of his belongings. What effect does the mirror image have on Finch's feelings about Leonard? Does the image reveal a different reality to Finch about herself as well?
9. Why is Finch excluded from the activities of the Dead when she brings Lucy the flowers Leonard gave her? [p.106]. Why does the purity of William's music make her feel further estranged? How does the evening signal a change in Finch's understanding of her relationship with the Dead?
10. When Finch asks for Leonard's father as a lawyer when she is arrested for harassing Lucy's mother, Mr. Livingston immediately begins denigrating his son. What do his actions tell you about the scars Leonard bears? Are they as damaging as the scars Finch has had to cope with?
11. When Reba Baker declares Finch her "next project, " she says that the Adult Women's Sunday School Class is determined to stop Finch from driving Lois Armour crazy. How does Reba's portrait of Lois [p. 140] differ from Lucy's? Judging from Finch's report to Lucy on her conversation with Lois [p. 146-7], is either description more authentic than the other? Is it important for Lois to admit that Lucy killed herself or will it destroy Lois's sanity?
12. As William conjures up the storm to avenge the desecration of his grave, Finch's father and the Mediator warn Finch to leave the cemetery. Why is Finch so reluctant to go, even though the cemetery feels like a strange place to her for the first time in her life? What does she mean when she says [p. 155] "The place is a map, and it's a map of me somehow"?
13. How accurate is Leonard's accusation that Finch cut herself off from people because she feared they would mistreat her?[p. 169] Does her isolation and her often provocative behavior belie her constant declarations that she fully accepts her disfigurement?
14. In The Rapture of Canaan, Reynolds explored the impact of an unforgiving religion on Ninah, a young girl raised in a strict Pentecostal community. In A Gracious Plenty, Finch's life is just as dramatically shaped by a terrible childhood accident. What are the similarities and differences between the spiritual isolation Ninah experiences when she defied the rules of her church and the physical isolation Finch chooses for herself?
15. Throughout the novel, the Dead display all the characteristics of the living -- they whine, they argue, they express anger and seethe with jealousy and resentment. Did this vision of life after death disturb you? Can you reconcile Reynolds's description with more traditional religious views?
16. Through stories of her own past, Ninah's grandmother in The Rapture of Canaan taught her that moral ambiguities are a natural part of life. What lessons does Finch learn from Lucy's stories about her wayward life and from Lois's secret admiration for it? How does William Blott's life as a cross-dresser -- and Reba's ultimate ability to overcome her hatred for "queers" and scrub the graffiti off his grave -- influence the decisions Finch faces at the end of the novel?