The Accidentals, Minrose Gwin
The Accidentals, Minrose Gwin
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The Accidentals
A Novel

Author: Minrose Gwin

Narrator: Cassandra Campbell

Abridged: 12 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 08/13/2019


Synopsis

Following the death of their mother from a botched backwoods abortion, the McAlister daughters have to cope with the ripple effect of this tragedy as they come of age in 1950s Mississippi and then grow up to face their own impossible choices—an unforgettable, beautiful novel that is threaded throughout with the stories of mothers and daughters in pre-Roe versus Wade America.Life heads down back alleys, takes sharp left turns. Then, one fine day it jumps the track and crashes.”In the fall of 1957, Olivia McAlister is living in Opelika, Mississippi, caring for her two girls, June and Grace, and her husband, Holly. She dreams of living a much larger life--seeing the world and returning to her wartime job at a landing boat factory in New Orleans. As she watches over the birds in her yard, Olivia feels like an “accidental”—a migratory bird blown off course.When Olivia becomes pregnant again, she makes a fateful decision, compelling Grace, June, and Holly to cope in different ways. While their father digs up the backyard to build a bomb shelter, desperate to protect his family, Olivia’s spinster sister tries to take them all under her wing. But the impact of Olivia’s decision reverberates throughout Grace’s and June’s lives. Grace, caught up in an unconventional love affair, becomes one of the “girls who went away” to have a baby in secret. June, guilt-ridden for her part in exposing Grace’s pregnancy, eventually makes an unhappy marriage. Meanwhile Ed Mae Johnson, an African-American care worker in a New Orleans orphanage, is drastically impacted by Grace’s choices.As the years go by, their lives intersect in ways that reflect the unpredictable nature of bird flight that lands in accidental locations—and the consolations of imperfect return.Filled with tragedy, humor, joy, and the indomitable strength of women facing the constricted spaces of the 1950s and 60s, The Accidentals is a poignant, timely novel that reminds us of the hope and consolation that can be found in unexpected landings.

About Minrose Gwin

Minrose Gwin is the author of three novels: The Queen of Palmyra, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Award; Promise, finalist for the Willie Morris Award in Southern Literature; and The Accidentals.  In her memoir, Wishing for Snow, she writes about the convergence of poetry and psychosis in her mother’s life. Wearing another hat, she has written four books of literary and cultural criticism and history, most recently Remembering Medgar Evers: Writing the Long Civil Rights Movement, and coedited The Literature of the American South, a Norton anthology. Minrose began her career as a newspaper reporter. Since then, she has taught as a professor at universities across the country, most recently the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Like the characters in Promise, she grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi.     


Reviews

Minrose Gwin has written a beautiful story packed with Drama, tragedy, family, and hope. Life is complicated and the characters in this story had way more than their fair share of complicated situations. This family drama spans five decades of hurt and healing. The primary focus of the story is on s......more

Olivia McAllister lives in 1950s Opelika, Mississippi with her husband, Holly, and two young daughters, June and Grace. Olivia wishes more doors were open for her. She misses her wartime job at the landing boat factory. Olivia becomes pregnant and makes a decision, one that leaves her daughters with......more

Goodreads review by DJ

Favorite Quotes: My sister and I don’t often go in the room where Dad sleeps. Our mother’s blood made a dark lake on the wood floor by the bed… We open our mother’s drawers and touch her things, drawing them to our faces, then lift up a corner of the rug to look at the stain. It is a secret thing we......more

Goodreads review by Bkwmlee

This book was a bit of a mixed bag for me, to the point that, despite having finished reading this a few days ago, I’m still struggling to gather my thoughts together so I can write a coherent review. On the surface, the story sounds simple enough: it is the year 1957 and the McAlister family – Oliv......more