Bottomland, Michelle Hoover
Bottomland, Michelle Hoover
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

Bottomland

Author: Michelle Hoover

Narrator: Amy Landon, Robertson Dean, Tavia Gilbert, Emily Woo Zeller, Richard Powers, various narrators

Unabridged: 8 hr 54 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/01/2016

Synopsis

At once intimate and sweeping, Bottomland—the anticipated second novel from Michelle Hoover—follows the Hess family in the years after World War I as they attempt to rid themselves of the anti-German sentiment that left a stain on their name. But when the youngest two daughters vanish in the middle of the night, the family must piece together what happened while struggling to maintain their life on the unforgiving Iowa plains.In the weeks after Esther and Myrle’s disappearance, their siblings desperately search for the sisters, combing the stark farmlands, their neighbors’ houses, and the unfamiliar world of far-off Chicago. Have the girls run away to another farm? Have they gone to the city to seek a new life? Or were they abducted? Ostracized, misunderstood, and increasingly isolated in their tightly knit small town in the wake of the war, the Hesses fear the worst. Told in the voices of the family patriarch and his children, this is a haunting literary mystery that spans decades before its resolution. Hoover deftly examines the intrepid ways a person can forge a life of their own despite the dangerous obstacles of prejudice and oppression.

About Michelle Hoover

Michelle Hoover has published fiction in Confrontation, the Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, Best New American Voices, and others. She has been a Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference scholar, the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University, a MacDowell fellow, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and the 2005 winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award for Fiction. She was born in Ames, Iowa, the granddaughter of four longtime farming families.

About Amy Landon

Amy Landon, Earphones Award–winning narrator, is a voice artist and classically trained actress with numerous film, television, and off-Broadway stage credits. Her voice can also be heard on many television and radio commercials. She has an easy facility with dialects, which she also coaches and teaches, and she is happy to find her lifelong obsession with books pairing up with her acting and vocal work. Her narration of Texts from Jane Eyre placed as a finalist for the Audie Award for Best Humor Narration in 2016.

About Robertson Dean

Robertson Dean has played leading roles on and off Broadway and at dozens of regional theaters throughout the country. He has a BA from Tufts University and an MFA from Yale. His audiobook narration has garnered ten AudioFile Earphones Awards. He now lives in Los Angeles, where he works in film and television in addition to narrating.

About Tavia Gilbert

Tavia Gilbert is an acclaimed narrator of more than four hundred full-cast and multivoice audiobooks for virtually every publisher in the industry. Named the 2018 Voice of Choice by Booklist magazine, she is also winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. She has earned numerous Earphones Awards, a Voice Arts Award, and a Listen-Up Award. Audible.com has named her a Genre-Defining Narrator: Master of Memoir. In addition to voice acting, she is an accomplished producer, singer, and theater actor. She is also a producer, singer, photographer, and a writer, as well as the cofounder of a feminist publishing company, Animal Mineral.

About Emily Woo Zeller

Emily Woo Zeller is an Audie and Earphones Award–winning narrator, voice-over artist, actor, dancer, and choreographer. AudioFile magazine named her one of the Best Voices of 2013. Her voice-over career includes work in animated film and television in Southeast Asia.

About Richard Powers

Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory, and Bewilderment was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Angela M on April 08, 2016

It's somber from the beginning and there is a heavy feeling of the burdens, the hardships of living in this remote farmland of Iowa . There's a pervasive loneliness too, even though there are 6 children in the Hess family. They have neighbors but it's a desolate place . The story centers around the......more

Goodreads review by Esil on February 28, 2016

3 1/2 stars. Bottomland by Michelle Hoover is a book to be read slowly and carefully. The language is deceptively simple, but the strength of the story is in the details one might miss if reading too quickly. Bottomland is set in the American Midwest starting in the early 20th century. At the beginn......more

Goodreads review by Rae on April 02, 2016

What a beautiful, spare book. (It couldn't be more in my wheelhouse.) Although I felt some of the sections (each is a different character's pov) were stronger than others, I understand why the author structured it this way. The everyday struggle of life for this family in rural Iowa after WWI is tol......more

Goodreads review by Holly on February 05, 2016

Set in Iowa on a lonely farm, the book opens as two adolescent daughters, Myrle and Esther, vanish in the night. One girl’s bed is perfectly made, the other covered with disheveled blankets. An aura of foreboding and confusion is quickly established. As the mystery of their disappearance unfolds, we......more

Quotes

“Hoover knows rural life, its unforgiving reality, and its people so well…Poignant, powerful, and hypnotically readable.” Jenna Blum, New York Times bestselling author

“A mystery wrapped in isolation and ethnic fear…[An] atmospheric and engaging tale, which turns out to be as much about sibling rivalry as about mistrust and oppression.” Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“The hatred and xenophobia that mark Hoover’s plot aren’t distant at all…As much as Bottomland evokes a grim American past with enough mastery to justify comparisons to Willa Cather, it also speaks of our present tense.” Boston Globe

“Part mystery, part tragedy, part coming-of-age narrative…the depth of Bottomland makes for a beautiful second novel by Hoover.” Chicago Book Review

“Hoover skillfully interweaves many of the Hess family members’ narratives. Her descriptions of the bleak rural landscape is chilling.” Library Journal (starred review)

“Hoover’s well-formed characters propel a consistently compelling tale.” Publishers Weekly

“Hoover vividly describes the harsh realities of life on a farm, on the battlefield, and in a Chicago sweatshop through the eyes of masterfully drawn characters. A novel as poignant as it is clear-eyed.” Booklist

“Deftly imagined and written, Hoover’s second novel offers an intriguing, modern take on a classic American landscape.” Kirkus Reviews

“An ensemble cast narrates this haunting story…told in segments by the autocratic father and four of his children, and each portion is performed by a different narrator. Each character has a distinct perspective as the bleak story unfolds. While all five voices are well cast, Robertson Dean provides the finest performance as the patriarch, thanks to his gruff tone and starkly elegant diction.” AudioFile

“An incandescent story of a family torn apart by war and loss.” Dawn Tripp, author of Game of Secrets

Awards

  • Indie Next List
  • Amazon Best Book of the Month
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