Who Do You Love: A Novel

ISBN: 0810127261

Author: Sayers, Valerie

Condition: New

Review "Humor and irony, family history, an unusual and fascinating setting, affecting characters-Who Do You Love has them all, along with a racy, light-handed prose style thats never less than entertaining."-New York Times Book Review (A "Notable Book of the Year") Product Description Sayers's gift for delineating family relationships against the microcosm of a small Southern town grows more assured with each novel. This third book to be set in Due East, S.C., focuses on the Irish Catholic Rooney family, outsiders in the community because of their religion. Dolores Rooney's New York origins and her outspoken championing of integration. On the unseasonably warm November day in 1963 during which most of the story takes place, Dolores ruminates over her fifth pregnancy and what it will mean to the family's already shaky finances, and Bill Rooney hopes to sell a prize piece of real estate to help his faltering business, meanwhile thinking bitter thoughts about Dolores's sanctimonious piety and intellectual superiority. Eleven-year-old Kate feels the stirrings of sexuality, and gains some insights from her teenage brothers. And a New York Times reporter whom Dolores brings home to dinner trains a spotlight on their inner lives and sets in motion an event whose implications will reverberate down the years. Then President Kennedy's assassination unites them in terrible grief. Sayers's prose has verve and humor, her view of Southern life is clear-eyed, authentic and generous. Her compassionate understanding of the strains, worries and missed communications of marriage gives this book depth and staying power. About the Author Valerie Sayers is the author of five novels: Due East; How I Got Him Back, or, Under the Cold Moon's Shine; Who Do You Love; The Distance Between Us; and Brain Fever. Who Do You Love and Brain Fever were named New York Times "Notable Books of the Year," and a film, Due East, was based on her novels Due East and How I Got Him Back. She has received a Pushcart Prize for fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts literature fellowship and has served on two NEA literature panels. Her stories, essays, and reviews appear widely in such journals as Zoetrope, Ploughshares, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Commonweal, and have been cited in Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays.