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When she stops comparing herself to her sainted sister, Ella blooms
Poor Ella. She has lived her life in the shadow of her older, beautiful, and most-favored sister, Terrell. A Texas beauty pageant winner, Terrell eventually lands herself a rich lawyer.
While big sis soaks in the adoration at the sailing club, Ella ekes out a mere existence as a self-educated horticulturalist and a single mother to her daughter, Birdie. To put peanut butter on the table for Birdie, Ella tends to the house plants for her rich clients in Old Metairie, Louisiana.
The black sheep of the family, Ella begins to crave her mother’s acceptance. She writes letters home in Martha-Stewart-style depicting a fictitious life set within magnolia-shaded, picket-fenced houses, heirloom roses, and high tea at Old Metairie’s famed Belle Vue Gardens.
 | | Ella in Bloom
Shelby Hearon
Penguin Books
ISBN # 0-14-20-0088-4
softcover
259 pages
$13.00 |
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When her sainted sister suddenly takes off to rendezvous with her lover and dies in a freak plane crash, Ella must come to terms with her mother’s lack of affirmation and a mysterious Texan from her past.
In this, her sixteenth novel, Kentucky native writer Shelby Hearon has created an engaging tale of the power of family expectations and one woman’s struggle with her own parents’ approval as she grows into both self-acceptance and love.
Hearon’s career span includes awards for fictional literature as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts. While she currently resides with her husband in Burlington, Vermont, her Southern upbringing is as clear as ever in this latest book.
Hearon gets the voices just right. She softly plucks way at the outer petals of her well-developed characters revealing to the reader an affecting story. Her clear narrative prose shines through in such lines as “We measure ourselves against them—our sister, our brother — they measure themselves against being perfect. That’s a whole lot harder. I forgot the high price they pay for doing things right.”
With Ella in Bloom, Shelby Hearon delivers a solid story from which we can all blossom.
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