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Balm
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Lisa Renee Pitts
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
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Publisher's summary
The New York Times best-selling author of Wench returns to the Civil War era to explore the next chapter of history - the trauma of the war and the end of slavery - in this powerful story of love and healing about three people who struggle to overcome the pain of the past and define their own future.
The Civil War has ended, and Madge, Sadie, and Hemp has each come to Chicago in search of a new life.
Born with magical hands, Madge has the power to discern others' suffering, but she cannot heal her own damaged heart. To mend herself and help those in need, she must return to Tennessee to face the women healers who rejected her as a child.
Sadie can commune with the dead, but until she makes peace with her father, she, too, cannot fully engage her gift.
Searching for his missing family, Hemp arrives in this Northern city that shimmers with possibility. But redemption cannot be possible until he is reunited with those taken from him.
In the bitter aftermath of a terrible, bloody war, as a divided nation tries to come together once again, Madge, Sadie, and Hemp will be caught up in a desperate, unexpected battle for survival in a community desperate to lay the pain of the past to rest.
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With her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects a life of security as a landowner. He instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot center of one of the darkest moments in American history - culpable regardless of her intentions. The Confederacy falling, her marriage in tatters, and the country divided, Varina and her children escape Richmond and travel south on their own, now fugitives.
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Read it rather than listen
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By: Charles Frazier
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Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All
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Allan Gurganus's Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All became an instant classic upon its publication. Critics and fans alike fell in love with the voice of 99-year-old Confederate widow Lucy Marsden, one of the most entertaining and loquacious heroines in American literature. Lucy married at the turn of the 20th century, when she was 15 and her husband was 50. If Colonel William Marsden was a veteran of the "War for Southern Independence", Lucy became a "veteran of the veteran" with a unique perspective on Southern history and Southern manhood.
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Dated.
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By: Allan Gurganus
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The Plague of Doves
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The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
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Avoid this Plague
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The Irishman's Daughter
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- Narrated by: Lucy Rayner
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Ireland, 1845. To Briana Walsh, no place on earth is more beautiful than Carrowteige, County Mayo. The small farms that surround the centuries-old Lear House are managed by her father, agent to the wealthy, reckless Sir Thomas Blakely. Tenant farmers sell the oats and rye they grow to pay rent to Sir Thomas, surviving on the potatoes that flourish in the remaining scraps of land. But when the potato crop falls prey to a devastating blight, families Briana has known all her life are left with no food, no resources, and no mercy from the English landowner.
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Wasted a credit
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By: V.S. Alexander
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Winter Collection
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- Unabridged
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Six award-winning authors have contributed brand new stories to A Timeless Romance Anthology: Winter Collection. A collection unlike any other, listeners will love this compilation of six sweet historical romance novellas, set in varying eras, yet all with one thing in common: Romance.
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Winter
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By: Sarah M. Eden, and others
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The year is 2004: Lina Sparrow is an ambitious young lawyer working on a historic class-action lawsuit seeking reparations for the descendants of American slaves. The year is 1852: Josephine is a 17-year-old house slave who tends to the mistress of a Virginia tobacco farm - an aspiring artist named Lu Anne Bell. It is through her father, renowned artist Oscar Sparrow, that Lina discovers a controversy rocking the art world: Art historians now suspect that the revered paintings of Lu Anne Bell, an antebellum artist known for her humanizing portraits of the slaves who worked her Virginia tobacco farm, were actually the work of her house slave, Josephine.
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Disappointing
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As young widow Rehana Haque awakes one March morning, she might be forgiven for feeling happy. Today she will throw a party for her son and daughter. In the garden of the house she has built, her roses are blooming, her children are almost grown, and beyond their doorstep, the city is buzzing with excitement after recent elections. Change is in the air.
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sad, poignant, thought-provoking, beautiful
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March
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From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March, and crafted a story "filled with the ache of love and marriage and with the power of war upon the mind and heart of one unforgettable man" (Sue Monk Kidd). With "pitch-perfect writing" (USA Today), Brooks follows March as he leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause in the Civil War. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs.
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Great book, greatly narrated
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The Last Ballad
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Twelve times a week, 28-year-old Ella May Wiggins makes the two-mile trek to and from her job on the night shift at American Mill No. Two in Bessemer City, North Carolina. The insular community considers the mill's owners - the newly arrived Goldberg brothers - white but not American and expects them to pay Ella May and other workers less because they toil alongside African Americans like Violet, Ella May's best friend. While the dirty, hazardous job at the mill earns Ella May a paltry nine dollars for 72 hours of work each week, it's the only opportunity she has.
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Dryer than a popcorn fart
- By Scott Wilson on 02-11-18
By: Wiley Cash
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Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
- By: Kelly Link - editor, Gavin J. Grant - editor
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- Unabridged
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Imagine an alternate universe where romance and technology reign. Where tinkerers and dreamers craft and recraft a world of automatons, ornate clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that. Where scientists and schoolgirls, fair folk and Romans, intergalactic bandits, and intrepid orphans - decked out in corsets, clockwerk suits, and tall black boots - solve dastardly crimes, escape from monstrous predicaments, consult oracles, and hover over volcanoes in steam-powered airships.
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MMMM, Orca Bacon
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 09-14-13
By: Kelly Link - editor, and others
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Sula
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Nel and Sula's devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.
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Good against evil and a riotous story to boot
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When a 70-year-old woman finds a five-year-old girl abandoned on her doorstep, she is thrust into a sorrowful past that can only be conquered with the help of the girl who opened her memory - the very girl she is trying to save. This first novel, according to author Jacquelyn Mitchard, is one of "exquisite power, honesty, and conviction...quite nearly without flaws."
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filthy language and violent content
- By Anna on 12-16-11
By: Lori Lansens
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What listeners say about Balm
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- lisa
- 09-13-15
Painfully slow @ times
This book didn't keep my attention the way her first book did. It was painfully slow @ times. I felt like the author used more words just to take up space. I'm happy I made it to the end but there were certainly many unanswered questions.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Whimsical
- 06-03-23
It was great in parts- but mostly
It was a good book. I was surprised at the twists. The reader was not my favorite. I need not care for the character voices.
The era was the saddest, so I didn't expect great happiness inside the book, but I found some hope regardless.
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- TeeTee
- 03-03-18
Just okay
The book wasn't bad at all, but it wasn't great either. I can't think of a favorite part or what I like least. Just a story. My book club did not delve deep into this one.
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-27-15
I thought we'd see more of the Wench Characters
Overall, I enjoyed this book, but I wished that we saw what happened to the characters from the author's book. Also, the narrator tended to fall in to a baby voice that drove me insane. Even with that, this was a great experience and I would listen to it again!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Bethany Hall
- 05-02-16
I liked this as much as I remember liking Wench.
I liked this as much as I remember liking Wench.
If you’re like me, I have to be in the proper mood to read about anything to do with the American Civil War and slavery, due in large part to my african-american heritage. I read this in companion with a Civil War non-fiction book called “Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy” which is about women and how they contributed to the war effort on both sides.
This book follows the story of 3 people and how they get on with life during the Reconstruction period in Chicago, a wealthy White widow, a free Black woman and a man who is a former slave.
I mostly enjoyed this book. There were some interactions between some of the characters that was a little icky- the boundary of consent in particular- but over all the characters are lively and likable.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Snowlady
- 06-20-16
Strange and boring
What disappointed you about Balm?
The story was marginally interesting, but the flat character development and disjointed narrative made it impossible to suspend belief and become immersed in the book. The weak storyline was made that much worse by the terrible narration. Ms. Pitts' voice was actually irritating; like a mosquito trapped in a jar.
What was most disappointing about Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s story?
The lack of interest Ms. Perkins-Valdez had in her own characters. It felt like they were uninvited guest who showed up to spoil a perfectly nice party.
How did the narrator detract from the book?
I listened to this audiobook while running. At one point, the battery in my iPhone ran down while I was listening to Balm in mid-workout and I was actually glad that the annoying sound of the narrator stopped. I have listened to audiobooks where the poor narration detracted from the listening experience, but this was my first experience where the narration was painful to listen to.
If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Balm?
I would have sent the outline back to the author with instructions to start over.
Any additional comments?
First audiobook in years I just couldn't finish. I gritted my teeth and waited out the first six hours and then threw in the towel.
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- TMelendez
- 09-16-19
ZZZZ
It was just a very boring story for me. I tried repeatedly to get into it.
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- Kam Shalom
- 06-01-23
Definitely Not For Me
I was so looking forward to another novel by Perkins-Valdez, as I adored Wench, but this novel was not for me. I did not connect with the characters or the story in general.
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- Norma Peden
- 06-23-16
Just Could Not Connect
Would you try another book from Dolen Perkins-Valdez and/or Lisa Renee Pitts?
I tried and I tried to "understand" this book but I just could not connect to any of the characters' storyline. How strange it was. I tried but will not read anything else from Dolen Perkins-Valdez nor do I ever want to hear anything else narrated by Lisa Renee Pitts. Sorry. Just being honest.
Would you ever listen to anything by Dolen Perkins-Valdez again?
No. I will not. Wench was okay but it too was a tad better than this book.
Would you be willing to try another one of Lisa Renee Pitts’s performances?
No. I would not.
If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Balm?
I did not get the flow of the story. The whole thing should have been scrapped and started anew.
Any additional comments?
No.
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