Halley

by Faye Gibbons

Overview

Winner of the Jefferson Cup Honor Book Award

Times are hard in Depression-era Georgia mountain country. Even so, fourteen-year-old Halley Owenby, her younger brother, Robbie, and their parents, Jim and Kate, manage to get by until Jim dies suddenly in an accident, and Kate decides she and her children have no choice but to move in with her parents. Like her father, Halley has never cared for her grandparents. Her grandfather Franklin is a fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist preacher who runs a strict and joyless household. A miserly tyrant, he claims any money the women in his household earn. Even their mail he considers his to read first. Waiting for the Rapture, when Jesus will return, may suit her grandparents and many others of the same faith, but Halley wants more. She yearns for some control of her own life. She longs for an education, which she firmly believes would eventually allow choices. Little does she suspect that such dreams might actually come true.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781603063289
Publisher:	NewSouth Books
Publication date:	05/01/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
Lexile:	710L (what's this?)
File size:	348 KB
Age Range:	12 - 16 Years

About the Author

FAYE GIBBONS knows firsthand about the people who populate her books. Born into a large mountain farm family, she grew up in mill towns and mountain communities throughout northern Georgia. After college, she married an Alabama boy and moved away, but part of her heart remains in the mountains of her childhood. Over the years she has shared stories from that childhood with her students and with two sons. Now those tales go into her books. When she isn’t writing, she fills her time with gardening, basket weaving, quilting, and weaving. Gibbons now lives with her husband on an Alabama farm where Gibbons and Johnson ancestors have lived and worked since the 1800s.

Editorial Reviews

Faye Gibbons creates a memorable portrait of adolescence in the Georgia hill country during the Great Depression with Halley, a handmade quilt of a novel. Halley is told with such strength and deceptive simplicity, it has a power all its own. This story has the ring of truth.

Wilmington Star News - Ben Steelman

Faye Gibbons is a superb storyteller and writer, with a fine-tuned ear for regional speech, a sharp eye for detail, and an unhidden love for her characters. The actions and confrontations that unfold in her new novel are gritty, intense, and sometimes dark. Yet the combined powers of hope, love, honesty, and stubborn effort finally shine through and light the way to brighter possibilities for Halley and those around her.

Si Dunn

Author Faye Gibbons is a master storyteller. It will be a long time before you forget Halley.

Book Log - Joan Broerman

A descriptive story of hardship and resilience that readers will be reluctant to put down.

Montgomery Advertiser

In her character Halley, Faye Gibbons shines a light on the harsh reality of life in mountain Georgia during the Great Depression and the limited choices afforded to a young woman. What Dorothea Lange did with her camera, Faye Gibbons has done with the page—illuminated a moment in time—and the process, reminds us of the indomitable value of the human heart. I loved this book.

Kathi Appelt

Though this isn't the mellowed, warm, and whimsical South of a Flannery O'Connor or Harper Lee novel, fans of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Ingrid Law's Savvy will feel on familiar ground. They will find the hard lives and determination of the women in Halley realistic and detailed.

Finding Wonderland - Tanita Davis

Halley is tough, gritty, and real, and so is her story. It is filled with characters I loved, and characters I loved to hate. I couldn't put it down—a real treasure of a book.

author of Pregnant Pause and A Summer of Kings - Han Nolan

Gibbons paints a convincing picture of Appalachian life during the Great Depression.

Tuscaloosa News - Don Noble

I was touched deeply by a book intended for juvenile readers, Faye Gibbons's Halley, a Depression-era story set in the poverty and gloom of the North Georgia mountains. It's a book for readers of any age—and of the ages. Quietly wonderful.

author of Hank Hung the Moon, Poor Man's Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana, and Enchanted Evening Barbie a - Rheta Grimsley Johnson

I was touched deeply by a book intended for juvenile readers, Faye Gibbons's Halley, a Depression-era story set in the poverty and gloom of the North Georgia mountains. It's a book for readers of any age—and of the ages. Quietly wonderful. — Rheta Grimsley Johnson, syndicated columnist, author of Hank Hung the Moon, Poor Man's Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana, and Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming

Source

"Gibbons paints a convincing picture of Appalachian life during the Great Depression." —Don Noble, Tuscaloosa News

"Halley is tough, gritty and real, and so is her story. It is filled with characters I loved, and characters I loved to hate. I couldn't put it down — a real treasure of a book." —Han Nolan, National Book Award winner and author of Pregnant Pause and A Summer of Kings

"The plot [of Halley] is compelling as the author adeptly covers loss, coming of age, and small-town attitudes and values without sugarcoating. Gibbons expertly depicts the complexity in “simple” Georgia mountain life. Just as Janet Taylor Lisle’s Black Duck showed an unusual side of Prohibition, this work gives a peek at an unusual side of the Great Depression. With shades of Richard Peck in this novel’s DNA, Gibbons’s tale features a strong and unique voice." —School Library Journal Starred Review

"I was touched deeply by a book intended for juvenile readers, Faye Gibbons's Halley, a Depression-era story set in the poverty and gloom of the North Georgia mountains. It's a book for readers of any age — and of the ages. Quietly wonderful." —Rheta Grimsley Johnson, syndicated columnist, author of Hank Hung the Moon, Poor Man's Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana, and Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming

"Faye Gibbons is a superb storyteller and writer, with a fine-tuned ear for regional speech, a sharp eye for detail, and an unhidden love for her characters. The actions and confrontations that unfold in new new novel are gritty, intense and sometimes dark. Yet the combined powers of hope, love, honesty and stubborn effort finally shine through and light the way to brighter possibilities for Halley and those around her." —Si Dunn, Books, Books & More (New) Books

"Author Faye Gibbons is a master storyteller. It will be a long time before you forget Halley." —Joan Broerman, Book Log

"A realistic portrayal of country life during the Great Depression. This emotionally involved novel will appeal to readers' empathy and sense of fairness." —VOYA Magazine

"A descriptive story of hardship and resilience that readers will be reluctant to put down." —Montgomery Advertiser

"A Depression-era novel defined by the hard-edged beauty of its rural Southern setting. That Gibbons knows this hardscrabble world to the bone shows in every precise detail of chamber pot, buttermilk and cow-safe fencing. A richly rewarding look at an era." —Kirkus Reviews Starred Review

"Faye Gibbons creates a memorable portrait of adolescence in the Georgia hill country during the Great Depression with Halley, a handmade quilt of a novel. Halley is told with such strength and deceptive simplicity, it has a power all its own. This story has the ring of truth." —Ben Steelman, StarNews

"Though this isn't the mellowed, warm and whimsical South of a Flannery O'Connor or Harper Lee novel, fans of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Ingrid Law's Savvy will feel on familiar ground. They will find the hard lives and determination of the women in Halley realistic and detailed." —Tanita Davis, Finding Wonderland

"In her character Halley, Faye Gibbons shines a light on the harsh reality of life in mountain Georgia during the Great Depression and the limited choices afforded to a young woman. What Dorothea Lange did with her camera, Faye Gibbons has done with the page — illuminated a moment in time — and the process, reminds us of the indomitable value of the human heart. I loved this book." —Kathi Appelt, National Book Award Finalist, John Newbury Honor Award, PEN USA Award

From the Publisher

★ 2014-08-12
A Depression-era novel is defined by the hard-edged beauty of its rural Southern setting. When 14-year-old Halley's father dies, in 1936, her mother capitulates to the demands of her own father, a strict Southern Baptist preacher, that the family move back home. Pa and Ma Franklin live in a farmhouse much like the one Halley leaves, only without the soft comforts—chief among them her brother Robbie's piano—Daddy had provided. Halley's a tough pragmatist, but she resents giving up her dream of attending high school to care for her aging grandmother. She even more strongly chafes at the fact that her mother must become a mill hand and turn her weekly pay packet over to Pa Franklin. Halley's growing sense of self and her mother's journey from grief to independence evolve slowly, changing like the seasons on the farm; the plot moves unhurriedly but with determination to the satisfying end. That Gibbons knows this hardscrabble world to the bone shows in every precise detail of chamber pot, buttermilk and cow-safe fencing.A richly rewarding look at an era. (Historical fiction. 10-14)

Kirkus Reviews