Books like 'Alice Adams (Esprios Classics)'
Readers who enjoyed Alice Adams (Esprios Classics) by Booth Tarkington also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical 20th century classics historical-fiction literary-fiction family social-commentary coming-of-age
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The Fortress by Meša Selimović
Rated: 4.67 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA novel on 18th century Sarajevo under Ottoman rule, featuring a soldier returned from the wars. A Muslim, he marries a Christian girl who supports him while he dabbles in politics, eventually leading a raid to rescue a friend from jail... -
![The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by João Guimarães Rosa]()
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by João Guimarães Rosa
Rated: 4.56 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLively reminiscences of bandit warfare in the sertao, the still primitive Brazilian back country, told by a wise, retired outlaw chief. ~Worldcat.orgGrande Sertão: Veredas (Portuguese for "Great Backlands: Tracks"; English translation: The Devil to Pay in the Backlands) is a novel published in 1956 by the Brazilian writer João Guimarães Rosa...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction historical -
![Pather Panchali: Song of the Road by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay]()
Pather Panchali: Song of the Road by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay
Rated: 4.56 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsPather Panchali deals with the life of the Roy family, consisting of Harihar, Sarbajaya, Apu and Durga, both in their ancestral village Nishchindipur in rural Bengal and later when they move to Varanasi in search of a better life, as well as the anguish and loss they face during their travels... -
![The Orphan's Mother by Marion Kummerow]()
The Orphan's Mother by Marion Kummerow
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 12 ratings1945, the German-Polish border: With Nazis on one side and Soviet forces approaching on the other, a mother and her little boy are torn apart, and so begins an unforgettable tale of courage, heartbreak and motherhood in wartime.“If you ever get lost, Jacob, you need to stay where you are and wait, because I’ll come looking for you. And I’ll always find you... -
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![Gilding the Lily by Rita Bradshaw]()
Gilding the Lily by Rita Bradshaw
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA heartrending tale of two sisters and their quest for a place to belong, from much-loved author Rita Bradshaw.Lily and Sarah Brown's childhood is an unhappy one. Sarah escapes by marrying Ralph Turner, a Sunderland dock worker, but Lily doesn't trust Ralph - a dark volatile man with a hidden cruel streak. When he tries to seduce Lily on his wedding day, her worst fears are confirmed... -
![Surviving the Fatherland by Annette Oppenlander]()
Surviving the Fatherland by Annette Oppenlander
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSpanning thirteen years from 1940 to 1953 and set against the epic panorama of WWII, SURVIVING THE FATHERLAND is a sweeping saga of family, love, and betrayal that illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the children's war...Categorized as:
coming-of-age family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century audiobook book fiction -
![Kinfolk by Pearl S. Buck]()
Kinfolk by Pearl S. Buck
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsKinfolk is the story of a Chinese family. Dr. Liang moves to America in search of a better life, but his children long to return to China. Each responds to their new life in China differently, providing rich insight into the struggles between Eastern and Western culture, and the differences between generations...Categorized as:
historical-fiction classics family literary-fiction fiction historical 20th-century politics -
![Body and Soul by Frank Conroy]()
Body and Soul by Frank Conroy
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn the dim light of a basement apartment, six-year-old Claude Rawlings sits at an old white piano, picking out the sounds he has heard on the radio and shutting out the reality of his lonely world.The setting is 1940s New York, a city that is "long gone, replaced by another city of the same name...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century book drama -
![Run with the Horsemen by Ferrol Sams]()
Run with the Horsemen by Ferrol Sams
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsPorter Osborne Jr. is a precocious, sensitive, and rambunctious boy trying to make it through adolescence during the depression years. On a red-clay farm in Georgia he learns all there is to know about cotton chopping, hog killing, watermelon thumping, and mule handling. School provides a quick course in practical joking, schoolboy crushes, athletic glory, and clandestine sex...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century animals anthologies -
![The Titan: by Theodore Dreiser]()
The Titan: by Theodore Dreiser
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIf there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book fiction -
![The Settlers by Vilhelm Moberg]()
The Settlers by Vilhelm Moberg
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsConsidered one of Sweden's greatest 20th-century writers, Vilhelm Moberg created Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson to portray the joys and tragedies of daily life for early Swedish pioneers in America. His consistently faithful depiction of these humble people's lives is a major strength of the Emigrant Novels...Categorized as:
classics family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
![A Mind at Peace by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar]()
A Mind at Peace by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLibrarian note: Alternate cover edition of: 9780976395096Set on the eve of World War II, A Mind at Peace captures the anxieties of a Turkish family facing the difficult reality entrenched in the early republic, founded on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction historical -
![Heavy Sand by Anatoli Rybakov]()
Heavy Sand by Anatoli Rybakov
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsTwo main parts of Anatoly Rybakov are titled after the writer’s major novels, Children of the Arbat and Heavy Sand, and explore the continuing relevance of these works for contemporary Russia...Categorized as:
classics family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
![Collected Short Stories: Volume 2 by W. Somerset Maugham]()
Collected Short Stories: Volume 2 by W. Somerset Maugham
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis final classic collection reveals Somerset Maugham's unique talent for exposing and exploring the bitter realities of human relationships in tales of love, infidelity, passion and prejudice. The stories range from "The Lotus Eater" where a man envisions a life of bliss in the Mediterranean, to the astringent tales of "The Outstation" and "The Back of Beyond" in Malaya and South East Asia...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies fiction historical -
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![They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple]()
They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratings'They Were Sisters is a compulsively readable but often harrowing novel by one of Persephone's best writers, who always manages to make the ordinary extraordinary,' writes Celia Brayfield. This, the second Dorothy Whipple novel we have republished as a Classic, is, like the others, apparently gentle but it has a very strong theme, in this case domestic violence...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction family fiction historical female-author marriage -
![Hatter's Castle by A.J. Cronin]()
Hatter's Castle by A.J. Cronin
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsHatter's Castle (1931) is the first novel of author A. J. Cronin. The story is set in 1879, in the fictional town of Levenford, on the Firth of Clyde. The plot revolves around many characters and has many subplots, all of which relate to the life of the hatter, James Brodie, whose narcissism and cruelty gradually destroy his family and life... -
![Sista brevet till Sverige by Vilhelm Moberg]()
Sista brevet till Sverige by Vilhelm Moberg
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsBook Four portrays the Nilsson family during the turmoil of living through the era of the Civil War and Dakota Conflict and their prospering in the midst of Minnesota's growing Swedish community of the 1860s-90s...Categorized as:
classics family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
![The Rose Stone by Teresa Crane]()
The Rose Stone by Teresa Crane
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA dazzling jewel holds the key to a prosperous new life… or total ruin The Rose Stone. A diamond, gained through betrayal and blood, upon which the Rosenberg family's fortunes were founded and whose price is yet to be paid. Kiev, 1875: Josef Rosenberg narrowly escapes death from a Cossack raid, rescuing Tanya, the youngest daughter of his old friend Boris Anatov...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction family romance historical 20th-century fiction epic -
![Margot's Secret by Roberta Kagan]()
Margot's Secret by Roberta Kagan
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAmid the chaos of Hitler's conquest of Europe, a family teeters on the edge of utter destruction.Trudy is still obsessed with her sister's husband, Max. But Max is torn between his loyalty to his wife, Margot, and giving in to Trudy, who might turn him in for the murder of her husband, the SS officer Rudolph...Categorized as:
historical-fiction family literary-fiction ww2 mystery historical fiction 20th-century -
![The Girl in the Photo by Catherine Hokin]()
The Girl in the Photo by Catherine Hokin
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsTheresienstadt Concentration Camp, 1944. ‘I have to go away, my darling. Please, be brave, stay alive, for me.’ Mama’s voice breaks. The little girl tries to stop the forbidden tears from falling, as the train takes her mother, and she is left alone…Berlin, six years later. Hanni Winter glows with pride as she shows her new husband around her first solo photography exhibition...Categorized as:
coming-of-age historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book female-mc fiction -
![The Traveller's Daughter by Michelle Vernal]()
The Traveller's Daughter by Michelle Vernal
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsROSA’S PAST IS HER PANDORA’S BOX, AND THE LID IS ABOUT TO BE LIFTED … ‘If you lie down with dogs you’ll rise with fleas’ – Irish Proverb Rosa Sorenson’s conversation was often peppered with sayings from her homeland. It was these conversational clangers that gave her daughter Kitty the only clue as to a childhood her mother refused to speak of...Categorized as:
family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book female-mc fiction -
![The Lies They Told by Ellen Marie Wiseman]()
The Lies They Told by Ellen Marie Wiseman
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn rural 1930s Virginia, a young immigrant mother fights for her dignity and those she loves against America’s rising eugenics movement – when widespread support for policies of prejudice drove imprisonment and forced sterilizations based on class, race, disability, education, and country of origin – in this tragic and uplifting novel of social injustice, survival, and hope for readers of Susan... -
![The Fields by Conrad Richter]()
The Fields by Conrad Richter
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsConrad Richter's trilogy of novels The Trees (1940), The Fields (1946), and The Town (1950) trace the transformation of Ohio from wilderness to farmland to the site of modern industrial civilization, all in the lifetime of one character. The Fields continues the saga of the Luckett family that began in The Trees...Categorized as:
classics family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure book epic -
![Madame by Antoni Libera]()
Madame by Antoni Libera
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe comic "sentimental education" of a schoolboy who falls in love with his French teacher. Madame is an unexpected gem: a novel about Poland during the grim years of Soviet-controlled mediocrity, which nonetheless sparkles with light and warmth...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
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![Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple]()
Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWritten in 1953, the last book by novelist Dorothy Whipple, Someone at a Distance is a story about the destruction of a marriage. Ellen is “that unfashionable creature, a happy housewife” who loves her life in the English countryside. She tends her garden, dotes on her children, and, when she remembers, visits her cantankerous mother-in-law...Categorized as:
classics family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book female-author -
![Woesten by Kris Van Steenberge]()
Woesten by Kris Van Steenberge
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsHet indringende debuut van Kris Van Steenberge brengt ons naar de Vlaamse klei, waar de negentiende eeuw ten einde loopt. In het dorp Woesten treedt Elisabeth, dochter van de smid, in het huwelijk met de jonge arts Guillaume Duponselle. Maar er rust geen zegen op hun verbintenis. Als Elisabeth acht maanden later van een tweeling bevalt, blijkt de eerstgeborene een prachtige zoon, Valentijn... -
![Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig]()
Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe central volume in Ivan Doig's acclaimed Montana trilogy, Dancing at the Rascal Fair is an authentic saga of the American experience at the turn of this century and a passionate, portrayal of the immigrants who dared to try new lives in the imposing Rocky Mountains...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
![The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg]()
The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsConsidered one of Sweden's greatest 20th-century writers, Vilhelm Moberg created Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson to portray the joys and tragedies of daily life for early Swedish pioneers in America. His consistently faithful depiction of these humble people's lives is a major strength of the Emigrant Novels...Categorized as:
classics family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![Battles in the Desert by José Emilio Pacheco]()
Battles in the Desert by José Emilio Pacheco
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThis landmark novella—one of the central texts of Mexican literature, is eerily relevant to our current dark times—offers a child’s-eye view of a society beset by dictators, disease, and natural disasters, set in “the year of polio, foot-and-mouth disease, floods...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction coming-of-age literary-fiction romance fiction 20th-century drama -
![The Keeping Days by Norma Johnston]()
The Keeping Days by Norma Johnston
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFourteen-year-old Tish, living in Yonkers, New York, chronicles her family's problems and experiences during a seven month period in 1900...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age family historical-fiction 20th-century book children-books female-author -
![As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories by Alistair MacLeod]()
As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories by Alistair MacLeod
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe superbly crafted stories collected in Alistair MacLeod’s As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories depict men and women acting out their “own peculiar mortality” against the haunting landscape of Cape Breton Island... -
![The Kudzu Queen by Mimi Herman]()
The Kudzu Queen by Mimi Herman
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 7 ratings“Funny, sad, and tender… Mimi Herman has written a novel that possesses a true and hard won understanding of the South.” —David Sedaris, author of Happy-Go-Lucky Fifteen-year-old Mattie Lee Watson dreams of men, not boys. So when James T...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction family coming-of-age fiction historical audiobook 21st-century -
![Collected Stories by Frank O'Connor]()
Collected Stories by Frank O'Connor
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe definitive collection of short stories by a master of the form and one of Ireland's most celebrated authorsThis indispensable volume contains the best of Frank O’Connor's short fiction. From “Guests of the Nation” to “The Mad Lomasneys” to “First Confession” to “My Oedipus Complex,” these tales of Ireland have touched generations of readers the world over and placed O'Connor alongside W. B...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies fiction historical -
![The Valley Of Decision by Marcia Davenport]()
The Valley Of Decision by Marcia Davenport
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsOn the eve of World War II writer Marcia Davenport, best known for her biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, spent several years in Pittsburgh, her imagination caught by the drama of American industry. In 1942, Charles Scribner’s sons published her Pittsburgh novel, The Valley of Decision... -
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![The Heart of the Family by Elizabeth Goudge]()
The Heart of the Family by Elizabeth Goudge
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsDespite the "crinkled pink petals strewn in the path of those who would have preferred red," four generations of Eliots have survived the War and are moving forward. The family's remarkable matriarch Lucilla is still with them, though she's facing the dark night of the soul. All is turned on its head with the arrival of Sebastian, another survivor of WWII...Categorized as:
classics family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book christian -
![The Family Moskat by Isaac Bashevis Singer]()
The Family Moskat by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe vanished way of life of Eastern European Jews in the early part of the twentieth century is the subject of this extraordinary novel. All the strata of this complex society were populated by powerfully individual personalities, and the whole community pulsated with life and vitality... -
![The Priory by Dorothy Whipple]()
The Priory by Dorothy Whipple
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis 1939 country-house novel is set at Saunby Priory, a large house somewhere in England which has seen better times. We are shown the two Marwood girls, who are nearly grown-up, their father, the widower Major Marwood, and their aunt; then, as soon as their lives have been described, the Major proposes marriage to a woman much younger than himself - and many changes begin...Categorized as:
classics family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book female-author -
![Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether, Nellie Y. McKay]()
Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether, Nellie Y. McKay
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis modern classic is “a tough, tender, bitter novel of a black girl struggling towards womanhood” in 1930s Harlem—with a foreword by James Baldwin ( Publishers Weekly ). Depression-era Harlem is home for twelve-year-old Francie Coffin and her family, and it’s both a place of refuge and the source of untold dangers for her and her poor, working class family... -
![Ancient Tillage by Raduan Nassar]()
Ancient Tillage by Raduan Nassar
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFor André, a young man growing up on a farm in Brazil, life consists of “the earth, the wheat, the bread, our table, and our family.” He loves the land, fears his austere, pious father, who preaches from the head of the table as if from a pulpit, and loathes himself as he begins to harbor shameful feelings for his sister Ana... -
![A World for Julius by Alfredo Bryce Echenique]()
A World for Julius by Alfredo Bryce Echenique
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsJulius was born in a mansion on Salaverry Avenue, directly across from the old San Felipe Hippodrome. Life-size Disney characters and cowboy movie heroes romp across the walls of his nursery. Out in the carriage house, his great-grandfather’s ornate, moldering carriage takes him on imaginary adventures...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book drama -
![Climates by André Maurois]()
Climates by André Maurois
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWritten in 1928 by French biographer and novelist Andre Maurois, Climates became a best seller in France and all over Europe. The first 100,000 copies printed of its Russian translation sold out the day they appeared in Moscow bookstores... -
![All Change by Elizabeth Jane Howard]()
All Change by Elizabeth Jane Howard
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe final book in the landmark Cazalet Chronicles, recently broadcast on BBC Radio...Categorized as:
classics family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century adult audiobook -
![Ellan Vannin by Lyn Andrews]()
Ellan Vannin by Lyn Andrews
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsLife was not easy for widowed George Vannin and his young daughter but somehow George had raised the child alone and Ellan adored her father. She was ten when the shaft at Foxdale Mine collapsed, and her father never came up. From then on she lived with Aunt Maud, a dour woman with a quick temper... -
![The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep by Juliet Butler]()
The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep by Juliet Butler
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsBased on a true story, The Less You Know the Sounder You Sleep is a tale of survival and self-determination, innocence and lies.‘We’re waiting. I squeeze my eyes shut and dig my fingers into Masha’s neck where I’m holding her. She digs hers into mine. The curtains slowly open. I can’t see anything because the spotlight is on us, bright as anything and blinding me, but I can hear the gasp go up...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book -
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![The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland]()
The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA shiralee is a swag, a burden, a bloody millstone - and that's what four-year-old Buster is to her father, Macauley. He takes the child on the road with him to spite his wife, but months pass and still no word comes to ask for the little girl back...Categorized as:
classics family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![The Manor by Isaac Bashevis Singer]()
The Manor by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThis novel portrays the difficulties encountered by traditionalist Jews coming to terms with the social changes that rocked Poland in the late 19th century. The central figure of the novel is Calman Jacoby, who stands between the old and the new, unable to embrace either whole-heartedly...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction family fiction historical 20th-century book -
![Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker]()
Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFor this Bison Books edition, James Welch, the acclaimed author of Winter in the Blood (1986) and other novels, introduces Mildred Walker's vivid heroine, Ellen Webb, who lives in the dryland wheat country of central Montana during the early 1940s. He writes, "It is a story about growing up, becoming a woman, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, within the space of a year and a half...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century bildungsroman book -
![Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor]()
Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWorld War I has ended, and Ella, the oldest of the five sisters, who dreams of singing and dancing in the theater, is discovered by a Broadway talent scout. It seems that she will have her chance at a theatrical career after all, starting in vaudeville. But her thoughts are also on Jules, just returned from the War, and marriage...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age family historical-fiction 20th-century audiobook book children -
![Where the Air Is Clear by Carlos Fuentes]()
Where the Air Is Clear by Carlos Fuentes
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratings"Where the Air Is Clear," Carlos Fuentes's first novel, is an unsparing portrayal of Mexico City's upper class. Departing from a traditional linear narrative, Fuentes overlays Mexican myths onto contemporary settings, showing that even the rich and powerful must succumb to the indomitable spirit of Mexico, which undermines all institutions and shapes all destinies...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book fiction historical -
![You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe]()
You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsGeorge Webber has written a successful novel about his family and hometown. When he returns to that town he is shaken by the force of the outrage and hatred that greets him. Family and friends feel naked and exposed by the truths they have seen in his book, and their fury drives him from his home...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book
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