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Start giftingBottomland
This audiobook uses AI narration.
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Learn moreAt once intimate and sweeping, Bottomland—the anticipated second novel from Michelle Hoover—follows the Hess family in the years after World War I as they attempt to rid themselves of the anti-German sentiment that left a stain on their name. But when the youngest two daughters vanish in the middle of the night, the family must piece together what happened while struggling to maintain their life on the unforgiving Iowa plains.
In the weeks after Esther and Myrle’s disappearance, their siblings desperately search for the sisters, combing the stark farmlands, their neighbors’ houses, and the unfamiliar world of far-off Chicago. Have the girls run away to another farm? Have they gone to the city to seek a new life? Or were they abducted? Ostracized, misunderstood, and increasingly isolated in their tightly knit small town in the wake of the war, the Hesses fear the worst. Told in the voices of the family patriarch and his children, this is a haunting literary mystery that spans decades before its resolution. Hoover deftly examines the intrepid ways a person can forge a life of their own despite the dangerous obstacles of prejudice and oppression.
Michelle Hoover has published fiction in Confrontation, the Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, Best New American Voices, and others. She has been a Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference scholar, the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University, a MacDowell fellow, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and the 2005 winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award for Fiction. She was born in Ames, Iowa, the granddaughter of four longtime farming families.
Amy Landon, Earphones Award–winning narrator, is a voice artist and classically trained actress with numerous film, television, and off-Broadway stage credits. Her voice can also be heard on many television and radio commercials. She has an easy facility with dialects, which she also coaches and teaches, and she is happy to find her lifelong obsession with books pairing up with her acting and vocal work. Her narration of Texts from Jane Eyre placed as a finalist for the Audie Award for Best Humor Narration in 2016.
Robertson Dean has played leading roles on and off Broadway and at dozens of regional theaters throughout the country. He has a BA from Tufts University and an MFA from Yale. His audiobook narration has garnered ten AudioFile Earphones Awards. He now lives in Los Angeles, where he works in film and television in addition to narrating.
Tavia Gilbert has recorded hundreds of titles across a wide span of genres, including Erica Spindler romantic thrillers, John Scalzi science fiction, Jeaniene Frost fantasy. She received four Audies nominations and won three Audiofile Earphones Awards for titles The Obituary Writer, Sing Them Home and The Day of the Pelican. In addition to voice acting, Gilbert is an accomplished producer, singer and theater actor.
Emily Woo Zeller is an Audie and Earphones Award–winning narrator, voice-over artist, actor, dancer, and choreographer. AudioFile magazine named her one of the Best Voices of 2013. Her voice-over career includes work in animated film and television in Southeast Asia.
Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. His book, The Overstory, won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
Reviews
“Hoover knows rural life, its unforgiving reality, and its people so well…Poignant, powerful, and hypnotically readable.”
“A mystery wrapped in isolation and ethnic fear…[An] atmospheric and engaging tale, which turns out to be as much about sibling rivalry as about mistrust and oppression.”
“The hatred and xenophobia that mark Hoover’s plot aren’t distant at all…As much as Bottomland evokes a grim American past with enough mastery to justify comparisons to Willa Cather, it also speaks of our present tense.”
“Part mystery, part tragedy, part coming-of-age narrative…the depth of Bottomland makes for a beautiful second novel by Hoover.”
“Hoover skillfully interweaves many of the Hess family members’ narratives. Her descriptions of the bleak rural landscape is chilling.”
“Hoover’s well-formed characters propel a consistently compelling tale.”
“Hoover vividly describes the harsh realities of life on a farm, on the battlefield, and in a Chicago sweatshop through the eyes of masterfully drawn characters. A novel as poignant as it is clear-eyed.”
“Deftly imagined and written, Hoover’s second novel offers an intriguing, modern take on a classic American landscape.”
“An ensemble cast narrates this haunting story…told in segments by the autocratic father and four of his children, and each portion is performed by a different narrator. Each character has a distinct perspective as the bleak story unfolds. While all five voices are well cast, Robertson Dean provides the finest performance as the patriarch, thanks to his gruff tone and starkly elegant diction.”
“An incandescent story of a family torn apart by war and loss.”
“Immensely readable…Bottomland is alive with secrets, hard choices, and the acute costs of independence.”
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