Haven's Wake

by Ladette Randolph

Overview

Early July, and the corn in eastern Nebraska stands ten feet tall; after a near-decade of drought, it seems too good to be true, and everyone is watching the sky for trouble. For the Grebels, whose plots of organic crops trace a modest patchwork among the vast fields of soybeans and corn, trouble arrives from a different quarter in the form of Elsa’s voice on her estranged son’s answering machine: “Your father’s dead. You’ll probably want to come home.” 

When a tractor accident fells the patriarch of this Mennonite family, the threads holding them together are suddenly drawn taut, singing with the tensions of a lifetime’s worth of love and faith, betrayal and shame. Through the competing voices of those gathered for Haven Grebel’s funeral, acts of loyalty and failures, long-suppressed resentments and a tragic secret are brought to light, expressing a larger, complex truth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803243576
Publisher:	Bison Original
Publication date:	03/01/2013
Series:	Flyover Fiction
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Ladette Randolph is the editor-in-chief of Ploughshares magazine and is Distinguished Publisher-in-Residence at Emerson College. She is the award-winning author of A Sandhills Ballad (Nebraska, 2011), This Is Not the Tropics, and Leaving the Pink House, and editor of two anthologies, including A Different Plain: Contemporary Nebraska Fiction Writers. She is the recipient of the Pushcart Prize, a Rona Jaffe Foundation grant, four Nebraska Book Awards, and the Virginia Faulkner Award.

Table of Contents

No TOC

Editorial Reviews

Haven’s Wake is about memory and silence, and about secrets and the fear of them. But above all, it’s a tale of love and loyalty. At the very heart of this deeply heartfelt novel is the story of the restorative power of family and tradition.”—Timothy Schaffert, author of The Coffins of Little Hope

From the Publisher

"[Haven's Wake is] lyrically written and a wonderful read."—Ellen Meeropol, ellenmeeropol.com

ellenmeeropol.com - Ellen Meeropol

“Haven’s Wake is about memory and silence, and about secrets and the fear of them. But above all, it’s a tale of love and loyalty. At the very heart of this deeply heartfelt novel is the story of the restorative power of family and tradition.”—Timothy Schaffert, author of The Coffins of Little Hope

Timothy Schaffert

“A song of a story—uplifting, tender, heart-shattering. Ladette Randolph is a master. These characters are so real to me I feel I could drive to Nebraska and find them, easily.”—Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red

Debra Magpie Earling

"With prose that vivifies the intricate patchwork of characters and captures the landscape's simplicity, Haven's Wake explores 'the various attempts to explain the unexplainable,' including family, faith, and death."—Katharine Fronk, Booklist Online

Booklist Online - Katharine Fronk

“Ladette Randolph traces that finest of lines between what counts as betrayal and what counts as fidelity in a family, what counts as love and what counts as duty over the generations, what counts as desire and what counts as necessity in a home. Haven’s Wake is a moving reckoning of disappointments and glories.”—William Lychack, author of The Architect of Flowers

William Lychack