Count the Ways

A Novel

By: Joyce Maynard

Narrated by: Joyce Maynard

In her most ambitious novel to date, New York Times bestselling author Joyce Maynard returns to the themes that are the hallmarks of her most acclaimed work in a mesmerizing story of a family—from the hopeful early days of young marriage to parenthood, divorce, and the costly aftermath that ripples through all their lives

Eleanor and Cam meet at a crafts fair in Vermont in the early 1970s. She’s an artist and writer, he makes wooden bowls. Within four years they are parents to three children, two daughters and a red-headed son who fills his pockets with rocks, plays the violin and talks to God. To Eleanor, their New Hampshire farm provides everything she always wanted—summer nights watching Cam’s softball games, snow days by the fire and the annual tradition of making paper boats and cork people to launch in the brook every spring. If Eleanor and Cam don’t make love as often as they used to, they have something that matters more. Their family.

Then comes a terrible accident, caused by Cam’s negligence. Unable to forgive him, Eleanor is consumed by bitterness, losing herself in her life as a mother, while Cam finds solace with a new young partner.

Over the decades that follow, the five members of this fractured family make surprising discoveries and decisions that occasionally bring them together, and often tear them apart. Tracing the course of their lives—through the gender transition of one child and another’s choice to completely break with her mother—Joyce Maynard captures a family forced to confront essential, painful truths of its past, and find redemption in its darkest hours.

A story of holding on and learning to let go, Count the Ways is an achingly beautiful, poignant, and deeply compassionate novel of home, parenthood, love, and forgiveness.

Enthralled and uplifted

Joyce is a master story teller and I agree that in Count the Ways she brings the best of her gifts. Love her delivery here too. Well worth the listen. 👌

Great writing

I don’t write reviews very often but this book was very well written I felt like the characters were real. It was hard to stop listening

Great story

i enjoyed the story even though it was sad at times and thin were a struggle you still could feel the mothers love.

A Gem

This was my first Joyce Maynard book. I am not sure why, but I heard her tell a story on The Moth. The message in that story was so profound, I scrambled to get more views and understandings from her. This book takes the long view of real life, from its beginnings and through (not quite to the end, at least let’s hope not). Joyce Maynard writes about the ordinary in an extraordinary manner. She also takes the potholes and blind siding devastations and gives us all the strength to carry on through our own with the same grace and humanity of her character. Without soppy drama. My favorite take away was crazy land.

If there is a redeeming JD Salinger quality, it was his ability to spot a gem of a writer when he read her writing.

Count the Ways

This, by far, is my favorite listen. I think because the author was the reader. Amazing writing & delivering it the way she meant & felt it! Thank you