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Evensong by Kate Southwood
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Evensong

A Novel

$15.26

Retail price: $16.95

Discount: 9%

This title is not eligible for purchase with membership credits. Why?

Narrator Suzanne Toren

This audiobook uses AI narration.

We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

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Length 8 hours 7 minutes
Language English
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Margaret Maguire, a widow and grandmother home from the hospital in time for Christmas, is no longer able to ignore the consequences of having married an imperious and arrogant man. Despite her efforts to be a good wife and mother in small-town Iowa, her adult children are now strangers to one another, past hope of reconciliation. Margaret’s granddaughter could be the one to break the cycle, but she can’t do it without Margaret’s help. It’s time to take stock, to examine the past—even time for Margaret to call herself to account.

By turns tenacious and tender, contrary and wry, Margaret examines her life’s tragedies and joys, motivations and choices, coming to view herself and the past with compassion, if not entirely with forgiveness. Beautifully rendered and poignantly told, Evensong is a realistic portrait of a woman searching for tranquility at the end of her days.

Kate Southwood is the author of Falling to Earth. Her articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Huffington Post, among others. She lives in Oslo, Norway.

Suzanne Toren has over 30 years of experience in recording.  She won the American Foundation for the Blind's Scourby Award for Narrator of the Year in 1988, and AudioFile magazine named her the 2009 Best Voice in Nonfiction & Culture.  She is also the recipient of multiple Earphones Awards. Her many credits include works by Jane Smiley, Margaret Weis, Jerry Spinelli, Barbara Kingsolver, and Cynthia Rylant. AudioFile also raves, “Toren brings a distinguishing warmth and power to her narrations. Her talents extend to both fiction and nonfiction, and in her recording career of 30-plus years she has given listeners heart-wrenching memoirs, lively history, engaging light fiction, and involving mysteries.” Toren also performs on and off-Broadway and in regional theatres.

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Reviews

“In its gentle but insistent urge toward knowledge, Evensong shines a light into the dark.”

“Absolutely gorgeous…Beautifully constructed.”

Evensong is the story of a woman at the end of her life, taking a clear-eyed look at it…Kate Southwood performs a series of literary miracles. For this is a novel that both expands and compresses a life, that lays bare and embellishes it…an inspiring work of art. Truly, this is literature at its best.”

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Celebrate indie bookstores with our limited-time sale! Shop the sale