Half A Heart, Rosellen Brown
Half A Heart, Rosellen Brown
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Half A Heart

Author: Rosellen Brown

Narrator: Jayne Atkinson, LisaGay Hamilton

Abridged: 5 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/01/2000


Synopsis

Rosellen Brown's extraordinary new novel, Half a Heart, tells the story of a former civil rights activist, Miriam Vener, who feels trapped in the comfortable white upper-middle-class life she leads with her family in Houston in the 1980's. That life suddenly shatters with the appearance, after almost eighteen years, of Veronica (Ronnee), her biracial daughter, born of Miriam's passionate affair a generation ago with Eljay, a brilliant black professor at a Mississippi college, who has raised the child ever since. When Miriam introduces her daughter to the utterly white New England town where she summers, and to the Houston society which represents the compromise of her sixties ideals, the results are complicated: What claim does Miriam have on Ronnee after all this time, and what does Ronnee want of her mother now?

Ronnee wrestles with her fury at her mother's mysterious disappearance from her life. With which family -- and which race -- does Ronnee identify?

Half a Heart is a profoundly moving story about estrangement and intimacy, race and privilege, identity and belonging.

About LisaGay Hamilton

LisaGay Hamilton wrote and directed the award-winning documentary Beah: A Black Woman Speaks, which chronicles the life of Beah Richards. Ms. Hamilton was a series regular for seven years on the television drama The Practice as Rebecca Washington. Along with Beah Richards, Ms. Hamilton appeared in the movie adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel Beloved. She is a graduate of the Juilliard Drama Division.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lori on June 25, 2021

Well written, good character illustrations. Lots of drama, angst, and thought provoking scenes. I grew up in this era and felt closely to the Mother, Miriam. Good book and will recommend to others.......more

Goodreads review by Amanda on December 26, 2020

Really intriguing premise and there were parts of this that I enjoyed. However, the dialogue was unrealistic at parts and the entirety of the book was so incredibly wordy, as others have said. A lot was left unsaid here and I think with a lot of the wordiness cut out, we could have had more story in......more

Goodreads review by Steph on November 06, 2020

An exploration of family love and loyalty.......more

Goodreads review by Nancy on January 05, 2019

I CANNOT GET ENOUGH OF ROSELLEN BROWN'S writing! Book number three in the past 5 or so weeks. I want more. I have loved all three of them so far. Onward!......more

Goodreads review by Jean on July 29, 2011

Tthe 1st one of hers i hd read. It was a good characterization of mother/dgt relationships, black/white relationships, family/friends relationships. Much of the book is written as the introspections of the character being focused on at the moment, rather then dialogue between characters...................more