Serena Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B001I0YJXA | Format: PDF
Serena Description
The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton arrive in the North Carolina mountains to create a timber empire, vowing to let no one stand in their way, especially those newly rallying around Teddy Roosevelt's nascent environmental movement.
Yet when Serena begins to suspect that George's allegiances may lie elsewhere, she unleashes her full fury on the young mountain woman who bore his illegitimate child the year before. Rash's masterful balance of violence and beauty yields a powerfully riveting story that, at its core, tells of love both honored and betrayed.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 11 hours and 25 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Brilliance Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: October 7, 2008
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B001I0YJXA
Serena is an expansion of a long short story by Ron Rash. Pemberton's Bride is the longest and the best of the tales in Chemistry. A second short story from that book, Speckled Trout, was expanded into the novel The World Made Straight. Not many short stories--even long short stories such as Pemberton's Bride--can be made into successful full-length novels. Too often the result has a padded feel to it, as with Edgerton's Bible Salesman, which would have worked best as a novella. But Pemberton's Bride had a power to it, and was intense, compact, dark, and strongly character-driven. There are two central figures--George Pemberton and his new wife Serena--who arrive in western North Carolina to oversee operations on Pemberton's logging operation. A few of the main parts of the plot are altered when the 46-page short story was expanded into a 370-page novel, but the novel is deeper, richer, and darker--there's never a sense of padding.
The very first paragraph of the novel (and short story) quickly set the lasting tone: in 1929 a backwoods father waits on the station platform for the arrival of the Pembertons. He is accompanied by his 16 or 17-year old daughter, pregnant by Pemberton, and carries a freshly-honed bowie knife to plunge into Pemberton's heart. After the Pembertons arrive, some words are exchanged, Harmon draws his bowie knife and approaches Pemberton. "'We're settling this now,' Harmon shouted. 'He's right,' Serena said, "Get your knife and settle it now, Pemberton.'" Which Pemberton indeed does. So you immediately see that Serena is no shrinking violet. She's tough--tougher than Pemberton--and brutal--more brutal than Pemberton. People who stand in the Pembertons' way have an unfortunate tendency to die, usually unpleasantly.
Ron Rash has melded richly developed characters,the type that I thought passed with the masters of old, and encased them in a highly readable, interesting, yet, unusual setting. I've always read a lot of fiction, but recently, I've found much of it formulaic and lacking satisfaction. This book changes my opinion. I must not have been looking in the right places. The storyline is set in the Depression Era in the Asheville, North Carolina area in a lumber camp with a cast of characters that you constantly struggle to understand whether you like them, admire them or just downright despise them. Some will become your strength, some your mortal enemies, some your alter ego and still others are just bit players used to enhance the narrative - a very unique way to do this.
There are several subplots taking place and one is told from a perspective that I've not seen before - how the purchase of land for a National Park (The Great Smoky Mountains) could cause such hardship for so many.
I found myself struggling through the first twenty-five pages trying to find a rhythm with the author, as my first inclination - as it is with so many of today's fiction dramas - was to blow through this book: reading through the descriptive phrases and latching onto the quotations in and effort to read it without much time being spent. That would have been a tremendous mistake. The writing is so beautiful, that I was finding myself going back to re-read many sentences just for the beauty of the descriptions and metaphors. So I settled into a little slower rhythm, extending my reading time based on the number of words per minute, but allowing the richness of the story to take me into its world.
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