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Sign up todayBeneficence
A Novel
Length
9 hours 45 minutes
Language
English
Narrators
Cassandra Campbell, Tom Taylorson & Rachel Jacobs
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreA family’s only hope to heal their shattered lives is that love is stronger than grief
When they meet in the 1930s, Doris and Tup’s love is immediate. They marry quickly and Doris commits to the only life Tup ever wanted: working the Senter family farm, where his parents and grandparents and great-grandparents are buried under the old pines. Their lives follow the calming rhythms of the land—chores in the cow barn, haying the fields, tending their gardens—and in this they find immeasurable joy.
Soon their first child, Sonny, is born and Doris and Tup understand they are blessed. More children arrive—precocious, large-hearted Dodie and quiet, devoted Beston—but Doris and Tup take nothing for granted. They are grateful every day for the grace of their deep bonds to each other, to their family, and to their bountiful land. As they hold fast to this contentment, Doris is uneasy, and confesses, “We can’t ever know what will come.”
When an unimaginable tragedy turns the family of five into a family of four, everything the Senters held faith in is shattered. The family is consumed by a dark shadow of grief and guilt. Slowly, the surviving Senters must find their way to forgiveness—of themselves and of each other.
Meredith Hall‘s memoir Without a Map was instantly recognized as a classic of the genre and became a New York Times bestseller. It was named Best Book of the Year by Kirkus and BookSense, as well as Elle’s “Readers’ Pick of the Year.” Ms. Hall was a recipient of the 2004 Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation. Her work has appeared in the Five Points, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, New York Times, and many other journals. Hall divides her time between Maine and California.
Original bio sent from Cassandra:
Cassandra Campbell began doing voice overs as the voice for Calvin Klein’s Italian commercials. This was followed by commercial and documentary recording in both English and Italian. She has recorded many audiobooks and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as an Audie® Award nomination. As an actress and director, she has worked at the Public, the Mint, the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Stagewest, Theatreworks, the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, Millmountain Theatre, the National Shakespeare Company, and the New York Fringe Festival.
Tom Taylorson is an Earphones Award–winning narrator and Chicago-based actor with over a decade of stage experience. In that time he also built a voice-over career and now primarily works as a voice actor. Tom is an adjunct faculty member at Columbia College Chicago, teaching voice-over for interactive media.
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Reviews
“These voices from the past speak so clearly to our time.”
“Spare but decked with moments of crystalline beauty…gorgeous and moving.”
“Narrators Cassandra Campbell, Tom Taylorson, and Rachel Jacobs channel each member of the close-knit Senter family. Their stunning performances will put listeners in the heart of the family...This beautiful, haunting story, performed with sensitivity, is best enjoyed on audio. Winner of the Audiofile Earphones Award.”
“[A] powerful story of love and loss and endurance…transcendent.”
“If the word ‘luminous’ didn’t already exist, you’d have to invent it to describe Meredith Hall’s radiant new novel Beneficence.”
“It instructs us to savor life, to set aside our cold spirit, to notice human beings closely and tenderly, and to believe that telling life plainly is a virtue which can achieve beauty.”
“Hall’s prose is hewn, sinewy, with moments of electrifying beauty and grace.”
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