Before we sleep : a novel

Resource Information

The work Before we sleep : 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.

This resource has been enriched with EBSCO NoveList data.

Label

Before we sleep : a novel

Title remainder

a novel

Statement of responsibility

Jeffrey Lent

Creator

• trueLent, Jeffrey

Author

• trueLent, Jeffrey

Subject

• Fathers and daughters -- Fiction
• truePostwar life
• trueRunaway teenage girls
• trueSearching
• trueSmall town life
• trueTeenage girls
• trueVermont
• trueWorld War II -- United States
• trueBirthfathers
• Domestic fiction
• Families -- Fiction
• trueFamily and war
• trueFamily secrets
• Family secrets -- Fiction
• trueFathers and daughters
• Fiction
• trueMothers and daughters

Genre

• Fiction
• Domestic fiction

Language

eng

Summary

atey Snow, seventeen, slips the pickup into neutral and rolls silently out of the driveway of her Vermont home, her parents, Oliver and Ruth, still asleep. She isn't so much running away as on a journey of discovery. She carries with her a packet of letters addressed to her mother from an old army buddy of her father's. She has only recently been told that Oliver, who she adores more than anyone, isn't her biological father. She hopes the letter's sender will have answers to her many questions. Before We Sleep moves gracefully between Katey's perspective on the road and her mother, Ruth's. Through Ruth's recollections, we learn of her courtship with Oliver, their marriage on the eve of war, and his return as a changed man. Oliver had always been a bit dreamy, but became more remote, finding solace most of all in repairing fiddles. There were adjustments, accommodations, sacrifices--but the family went on to find its own rhythms, satisfactions, and happiness. Now Katey's journey may rearrange the Snows' story. Set in a lovingly realized Vermont setting, tracking the changes that come with the turning of the seasons--and decades--and signaling the dawning of a new freedom as Katey moves out into a world in flux, Before We Sleep is a novel about family, about family secrets, and about the love that holds families together. It is also about the Greatest Generation as it moves into the very different era of the 1960s, and about the trauma of war that so profoundly weighed on both generations

Storyline

• trueCharacter-driven

Tone

• trueMelancholy
• trueMoving

Writing style

• trueCompelling
• trueLyrical

Character

• trueFlawed
• trueSympathetic

Dewey number

813/.54

Index

no index present

Literary form

non fiction