Morning Glory

by LaVyrle Spencer

Overview

On the eve of World War II, two people are brought together by fate and discover an unexpected passion
Tall, dark and handsome Will Parker has served time for the killing of a Texas prostitute, but keeps losing jobs as his reputation becomes known. In the small town of Whitney, Ga., at the beginning of WW II, he answers the advertisement of a pregnant widow and mother of two, the abused and reclusive Eleanor Dinsmore, who is looking for a husband. Soon in love with ostensibly plain, bedraggled Ellie, Parker dotes on her two boys, and works to support the family. Fittingly for this sort of bucolic idyll, Will and Ellie, despite their rudimentary educations, love books and develop a special friendship with wise old Miss Beasley, the local librarian. Alas, brazen and rapacious Lula Peak, the town floozie, sets her sights on Will, waylaying him in the library; meantimes, Lula is blackmailing her lover, the cowardly Harley Overmire, who is no friend of Will. The clearly drawn characters fulfill their imperativesincluding Will, who becomes a war heroand all is neatly and pleasingly resolved. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940012665478
Publisher:	The Axelrod Agency
Publication date:	04/01/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	53,524
File size:	603 KB

About the Author

LaVyrle Spencer was born in Minnesota, where she attended high school and met and married her high school sweetheart, Dan Spencer — a decision she calls the wisest choice of her life.
Although she showed a flair for writing during high school, LaVyrle didn't begin her first novel until she was in her thirties, working as a teacher's aide at Osseo Junior High School. Spencer decided to try transferring to paper a recurring dream she was having about a story based on her grandmother's lifestyle on a Minnesota farm. She awoke at 4:00 a.m. one morning, and as Spencer recalls, "you think that you can do anything at 4:00 a.m. I wrote the first half a page in a three-ring notebook with a ball-point pen." She finished that first novel, The Fulfillment, and it was published in 1979.
LaVyrle Spencer could be a character in one of her own bestselling novels, as she has experienced as much love, pain, and bliss as any of her characters. And like her heroines she is a charming mix of fire and warmth, strength, savvy and soft-heartedness. Her books are family love stories, and the characters in her novels aren't perfect, they are real people with real problems. Before they live happily ever after they must overcome some sort of adversity — pregnancy, divorce, a lengthy separation, the loss of a loved one — and then undergo a catharsis. Along the way there are moments of anger, happiness and self- revelation. The stories center on themes of abiding love, family ties and strength in difficult times. According to Spencer, "the trademark of my books is mending relationships, showing people how to mend relationships."
Whether set in the Old West of the 1880s, or today, in suburban Minnesota, opening a Spencer novel means seeing love in a new light, and meeting characters so real it's all you can do not to climb into the pages yourself.
LaVyrle and Dan Spencer live in a beautiful Victorian house in Stillwater, Minnesota, and the Spencers often escape to their rustic log cabin deep in the Minnesota woods. LaVyrle's hobbies include gardening, travel, gourmet cooking, entertaining, playing bass guitar and the electronic piano, photography, and observing nature.