The accidentals : a novel

Resource Information

The work The accidentals : a novel represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in City Libraries, City of Gold Coast. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

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Label

The accidentals : a novel

Title remainder

a novel

Statement of responsibility

Minrose Gwin

Creator

• trueGwin, Minrose

Author

• trueGwin, Minrose

Subject

• trueWomen's role
• trueAbortion
• trueAmbition in women
• trueAunt and niece
• Domestic fiction
• Fiction
• trueInterpersonal relations
• Interpersonal relations -- Fiction
• Mississippi -- Fiction
• trueMississippi -- History -- 20th century
• trueMothers -- Death
• trueMothers and daughters
• Mothers and daughters -- Fiction
• Nineteen fifties -- Fiction
• trueOrphans
• truePersonal conduct
• trueRace relations
• Sisters -- Fiction
• trueSocial change
• trueTeenage pregnancy

Genre

• Domestic fiction
• Fiction

Language

eng

Summary

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

Tone

• trueHopeful
• trueMelancholy
• trueHeartwrenching

Writing style

• trueDescriptive
• trueRichly detailed
• trueStylistically complex

Dewey number

813.6

Index

no index present

Literary form

fiction