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The Sound of Gravel
- A Memoir
- Narrated by: Ruth Wariner
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
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"The narration by Wariner compliments the candid nature of her story...A captivating and emotional story delivered in a straightforward way without an ounce of self-pity." (Library Journal)
A riveting, deeply-affecting audiobook memoir of one girl's coming-of-age experiences in a polygamist cult.
Ruth Wariner was the 39th of her father's 42 children. Growing up on a farm in rural Mexico, where authorities turned a blind eye to the practices of her community, Ruth lives in a ramshackle house without indoor plumbing or electricity. At church, preachers teach that God will punish the wicked by destroying the world and that women can only ascend to Heaven by entering into polygamous marriages and giving birth to as many children as possible. After Ruth's father - the man who had been the founding prophet of the colony - is brutally murdered by his brother in a bid for church power, her mother remarries, becoming the second wife of another faithful congregant.
In need of government assistance and supplemental income, Ruth and her siblings are carted back and forth between Mexico and the United States, where her mother collects welfare and her step-father works a variety of odd jobs. Ruth comes to love the time she spends in the States, realizing that perhaps the community into which she was born is not the right one for her. As Ruth begins to doubt her family's beliefs and question her mother's choices, she struggles to balance her fierce love for her siblings with her determination to forge a better life for herself.
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Gathering of Waters is a deeply engrossing tale narrated by the town of Money, Mississippi - a site both significant and infamous in our collective story as a nation. Money is personified in this haunting story, which chronicles its troubled history following the arrival of the Hilson and Bryant families. Tass Hilson and Emmett Till were young and in love when Emmett was brutally murdered in 1955. Anxious to escape the town, Tass marries Maximillian May and relocates to Detroit
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Loved it!!
- By Naima on 07-26-16
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The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove
- A Novel
- By: Susan Gregg Gilmore
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Bezellia Grove was born into the most prominent of Nashville families, but that didn’t stop her from having an alcoholic mother and a distant, adulterous father. Her nanny, Maizelle, and Nathaniel, the handyman, are the people who have taken care of her since she can remember. She considers them family, but her parents just consider them servants because they are Black. When Bezellia has a clandestine romance with Nathaniel's son, Whites and Blacks unite in fury at the young couple.
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light southern fiction
- By suzanne on 02-08-13
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The Walking People
- By: Mary Beth Keane
- Narrated by: Sile Bermingham
- Length: 16 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Greta Cahill never believed she would leave her village in the west of Ireland until she found herself on a ship bound for New York, along with her sister Johanna and a boy named Michael Ward. Labeled a "softheaded goose" by her family, Greta discovers that in America she can fall in love, raise her own family, and earn a living.
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Irish immigratn story
- By Chrissie on 09-10-13
By: Mary Beth Keane
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Sugar
- By: Bernice L. McFadden
- Narrated by: Myra Lucretia Taylor
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Sugar arrives in the small town of Bigelow, Arkansas, like an ominous storm. She saunters down the street in a blonde wig and spiked heels, cigarette dangling between red-painted lips. Without even speaking to her, the women in town hate her. But when she moves in next door to Pearl, a woman who tragically lost her daughter 15 years earlier, the two women bond over tragic pasts.
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Wow wow wow
- By brenda transon on 08-27-19
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The Outcast
- By: Jolina Petersheim
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Rachel Stoltzfus never imagined she’d be the talk of her Old Order Mennonite community until whispers stir the moment her belly swells with new life. Unmarried and refusing to repent by naming the partner in her sin, Rachel feels the wrath of the religious sect as she is shunned by those she loves most and eventually forced to leave - driven out by her twin sister’s husband, the bishop. But secrets run deep in this cloistered community, and the bishop is hiding some of his own, threatening his conscience and his very soul.
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full story not the norm for amish fiction
- By susan on 09-15-13
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Like Family
- Growing Up in Other People's Houses, a Memoir
- By: Paula McLain
- Narrated by: Wendy Tremont King
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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This powerful and haunting memoir details the years Paula McLain and her two sisters spent as foster children after being abandoned by both parents in California in the early 1970s. As wards of the State, the sisters spent the next 14 years moving from foster home to foster home. The dislocations, confusions, and odd pleasures of an unrooted life form the basis of one of the most compelling memoirs in recent years - a book in the tradition of Jo Ann Beard's The Boys of My Youth and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club.
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A famous writer describes her life growing up in foster care
- By Nancy C. on 12-21-18
By: Paula McLain
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Far From the Tree
- By: Virginia DeBerry, Donna Grant
- Narrated by: Fran L. Washington
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Celeste English and Ronnie Frazier are sisters, but they couldn't be more different. Celeste is a doctor's wife, living a perfect and elegant façade. But secretly, her marriage is falling apart and her need to control people around her threatens to destroy them all. Ronnie is an actress, living in New York. But she has no money, she has no home, and her life is held together by "chewing gum, paper clips, and spit." When their father dies, the sisters inherit a house in Prosper, North Carolina.
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My Favorite Book So Far, by Far!
- By Dee on 04-19-09
By: Virginia DeBerry, and others
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The Lost Girls
- A Novel
- By: Heather Young
- Narrated by: Alice Rosengard, Laurel Schroeder
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family's vacation home on a remote Minnesota lake. Her disappearance destroys the family - her father commits suicide, and her mother and two older sisters spend the rest of their lives at the lake house, keeping a decades-long vigil for the lost child. Sixty years later, Lucy, the quiet and watchful middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before her death, she writes the story of that devastating summer in a notebook that she leaves, along with the house, to the only person who might care: her grandniece, Justine.
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Engaging story spanning three generations.
- By LilMissMolly on 09-23-16
By: Heather Young
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Marrow
- By: Tarryn Fisher
- Narrated by: Audra Pagano
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Margo is not like other girls. She lives in a derelict neighborhood called the Bone, in a cursed house, with her cursed mother, who hasn't spoken to her in over two years. She lives her days feeling invisible. It's not until she develops a friendship with her wheelchair-bound neighbor, Judah Grant, that things begin to change. When a neighborhood girl, seven-year-old Neveah Anthony, goes missing, Judah sets out to help Margo uncover what happened to her. What Margo finds changes her, and with a new perspective on life she's determined to find evil and punish it.
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HUH?? I'm so confused LOL
- By ❤️Cyndi Marie❤️🎧Audiobook Addicts🎧 on 09-15-16
By: Tarryn Fisher
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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How to Survive a Summer
- A Novel
- By: Nick White
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Grad student Will Dillard has largely buried memories of the summer he spent at a camp intended to "cure" homosexuality. But when he finds out a horror movie based on the camp is hitting theaters, he's forced to face his past - and his role in another camper's death. As he recounts the events surrounding his "failed rehabilitation", Will strikes out on an impromptu road trip back home to Mississippi, eventually returning to the abandoned campgrounds to solve the mysteries of that pivotal summer.
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A story full of heart and healing
- By ZippyBippy on 05-06-18
By: Nick White
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It is 1970. "Bean" Holladay is 12 and her sister, Liz, is 15 when their artistic mother, Charlotte, a woman who flees every place she’s ever lived at the first sign of trouble," takes off to find herself." She leaves her girls enough money for food to last a month or two. But when Bean gets home from school one day and sees a police car outside the house, she and Liz board a bus from California to Virginia, where their widowed Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying antebellum mansion that’s been in the family for generations.
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A Bronze Star
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This powerful and haunting memoir details the years Paula McLain and her two sisters spent as foster children after being abandoned by both parents in California in the early 1970s. As wards of the State, the sisters spent the next 14 years moving from foster home to foster home. The dislocations, confusions, and odd pleasures of an unrooted life form the basis of one of the most compelling memoirs in recent years - a book in the tradition of Jo Ann Beard's The Boys of My Youth and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club.
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A famous writer describes her life growing up in foster care
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Favorite Wife
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She had no choice in the matter - none of the girls did. Her mission was to give birth to and raise many children in devoted service to a shared husband. Susan was 15 years old when she became the sixth wife of Verlan LeBaron, one of the leaders of a rogue Mormon cult, who was engaged in a blood feud with his brother that from 1972 to 1988 claimed up to two dozen lives. In this gripping and eloquent book, Susan Ray Schmidt tells the story of growing up on the inside and of her ultimate escape with her children from an oppressive and violent life.
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If you have 22 hours to kill...
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What listeners say about The Sound of Gravel
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Becky Hansen
- 05-02-16
Open and Hones
What did you love best about The Sound of Gravel?
The author was open and honest about the bad and good. I am sure it was difficult to relive some of those experiences but I think it is important that we understand what some of these children are going through.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Ian Phelps
- 05-10-16
Great but narration was bland
Heart touching story but the narration needed a change of tone. Brought tears to my eyes.
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2 people found this helpful
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- jocelyn ackerman
- 07-01-16
unbelievable yet raw with honesty
this is by far the best memoir I have read. Ruth I am proud of you!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Susan
- 09-20-18
I miss them already
I love this book. There were moments when I was absolutely shocked and surprised, which rarely happens when I listen to books. I usually suspect what is happening, and then am still entertained listening afterwards. There were moments during this book when I stared out the car window with a surprised look on my face. I felt a bond with the children in this family, and disgust for others. It was so good. It was SO good. I miss them.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Elizabeth Mykietyn
- 02-21-16
Awful True Story
First have to say what courage Ruth the author and main character in this book has. Wow! Though the story disgusts me at times, I'm honored to have read it to learn about someone so strong in horrible circumstances and think indirectly knowing her story makes me want to go out and be a better person; live life to fullest.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Jan Richards
- 05-28-16
Harrowing story, ultimately courageous
A compelling, often heartbreaking story. I kept wanting to jump into the story and rescue the children from the situation they were in...or make it fiction instead of fact...but of course I could not do that. The story pulled me along very quickly in the hope that the adults around these children would wake up and take better care of the children they had, and that things would get much better for the families in the story. The main character's and other children's courage at various points in the story, and their resilience were, for me, the real bright spots of the story. My daughter recommended this book highly to me, and I am recommending it to others in my sphere of reading influence, including my niece and members of my book club.
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- Brooke T.
- 05-15-22
Unbelievable!
Ruth is an inspiration. Her writing is vivid and robust. I found myself thinking about her story even when I wasn’t listening. Bravo!
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- ME00625
- 06-18-22
Told with appropriate feeling and enthusiasm
Every time I read/listen to a story like this, I am always so grateful for what the Lord has blessed me with!
I am so glad she was able to escape into a better life, as well!
I really like how the author read her own story. It is always a better telling of the experience when the one who wrote it, reads it to us! She was able to mimic the people's actual voices better than I would have been able to, since she was there and I was not. Also, authors that read their own stories are able to enunciate the important words/phrases where they're supposed to and bring more enthusiasm to the story than those who read other people's stories.
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- Devin
- 03-24-17
Wow
Gut wrenching and captivating. This book strikes up just about every emotion as it shows the lows of humanity and someone so brave to overcome them.
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- Moonkiszt
- 02-20-19
Inspiration. Hard things. Can be done.
Astounding. . .I will be pondering this one for a very long time.
A few months ago I was privileged to attend a book club meeting where the author, Ruth Wariner, was presenting her book and left a generous period of time for questions. I had not yet read the book, and didn't think I would. . .sounded like uncomfortable reading on many levels for me. . .I am only two generations away from polygamy. She took all questions, all of them, tidy and simple and the convoluted, messy ones. It became clear that this quiet, composed woman was a hero. She was brave and fierce and stoic. I ordered my audible copy and started listening that very evening.
She'd lived inside a tornado for her first 14 years and was spit out in a scene as tragic as any penned by Shakespeare . . .and she stood up, dusted herself off and flew into action. Astounding. A hero, a mother to her siblings. . .no. . .a sister in the best measure of that word. You need to meet her. Read her story. . . .if you are a parent, you need to feel the damage done by hers and see? feel? the places where choices could have been different and changed a bunch of lives for the better. If you are a child, anyone's child, you will see it's absolutely often the right thing to do to RUN, to keep on, one foot in front of another, AWAY from where you first came to yourself. There is a place where a stand can be made - this far, no further! You have options. Scary for sure, and braveness requisite, but options are there. Ruth's story is an inspiration, stark as it is, that hard things can be done. Must be done. Must. Be. Done.
And then, as a special gift and blessing to all, the story needs to be told. Thank you, Ruth.
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