Count the Ways

A Novel

By: Joyce Maynard

Narrated by: Joyce Maynard

Length: 15 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

In her most ambitious novel to date, New York Times best-selling 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 redheaded 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 young new 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.

©2021 Joyce Maynard (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers

I count the ways...

Have so so much to say in praise of this marvelous novel but lacking the skill with words in comparison to Maynard I just say THANKYOU! This book touched every emotion there is and am forever grateful for having read it!

A wonderful book

I loved this book! It was beautifully written and so true to what life really is.

A book of life, love and forgiveness

A book written from life experience that includes happiness, sorrow and a way to get thru it all.

Great story

Amazing book and this one touches every emotion ! So well written and audible narration was very good

Relatable and heartbreaking

This novel is beautifully written and emotionally honest about family life at its best and worst.

this story is so sad

the storytelling is lovely. it is just so sad to see a woman let her former husband take so much from her. it was definitely hard to read.

Wonderful storytellling

Joyce has written a terrific story about family spanning four decades. I was engaged from the first page to the last. Her reading drew you right in. I highly recommend. Loved it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I didn't want to stop listening.

Such a sad book. I actually cried several times. Yet interesting and intriguing. Not for everyone.

Exceptional!☆☆☆☆☆

I read novels constantly. This novel touched me to the core. It's about love, loss and the possibility of forgiveness. It is written with skill, emotion, and is very well edited. It is not soppy, or melodramatic. But truthful, gutwrenching, artistic. Don't let this one pass you by.

My new favorite author

So many parts of Eleanor‘s life and story are relatable.
Joyce Maynard has such a beautiful way of expressing happiness, love, disappointment, and the trauma that can accompany life.
I can’t wait to read the sequel.