0

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Ferland, Danielle
Firth, Katie
Forbes, Kate

Smith, Lee

Baker & Taylor Axis 360
Ferland, Danielle
Firth, Katie
Forbes, Kate
hoopla digital

Smith, Lee

Online OverDrive Collection

Axis 360
Online Hoopla Collection
Online OverDrive Collection

A dusty box discovered in the wreckage of a once prosperous plantation on Agate Hill in North Carolina contains the remnants of an extraordinary life: diaries, letters, poems, songs, newspaper clippings, court records, marbles, rocks, dolls, and bones. It's through these treasured mementos that we meet Molly Petree. Raised in those ruins and orphaned by the Civil War, Molly is a refugee who has no interest in self-pity. When a mysterious benefactor appears out her father's past to rescue her, she never looks back. Spanning half a century, On Agate Hill follows Molly's passionate, picaresque journey through love, betrayal, motherhood, a murder trial-and back home to Agate Hill under circumstances she never could have imagined. Lee Smith began writing stories at the age of nine and selling them for a nickel apiece. Since then, she has written seventeen works of fiction, including Fair and Tender Ladies, Oral History, Guests on Earth, and most recently, Dimestore. She has received many awards, including the North Carolina Award for Literature and an Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; her novel The Last Girls was a New York Times bestseller as well as winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. Dear Diary, This book belongs to me Molly Petree age thirteen today May 20 in the year of our Lord 1872, Agate Hill, North Carolina. I am an orphan girl. This is my own book of my own self given to me by the preachers wife Nora Gwyn who said, This little diary is for you my dear unfortunate child, to be your friend and confi dent, to share all your thoughts and deepest secrets for I know how much you need a friend and also how much you love to read and write. I do believe you have a natural gift for it. Now it is my special hope that you will set down upon these pages your own memories of your lovely mother and your brave father, and of your three brothers as well, and of all that has befallen you. For I believe this endeavor might help you, Molly Petree. So I urge you to take pen in hand commencing your diary with these words, Thy will be done O Lord on Earth as it is in Heaven, Amen. Well, I have not done this! And I will not do it either no matter how much I love pretty Nora Gwyn who looks like a lady on a fancy plate and has taught me such few lessons as I have had since Aunt Fannie died. NO for I mean to write in secrecy and stelth the truth as I see it. I know I am a spitfire and a burden. I do not care. My family is a dead family, and this is not my home, for I am a refugee girl. I am like the ruby-throated hummingbird that comes again and again to Fannies red rosebush but lights down never for good and all, always flying on. And it is true that often I feel so lonesome for all of them that are gone. I live in a house of ghosts. I was born before the Surrender and dragged from pillar to post as Mamma always said until we fetched up here in North Carolina after Columbia fell. Our sweet Willie was born there, into a world of war. He was real little all waxy and bloody, and Old Bess put him into a dresser drawer while the fires burned red outside the windows. Mamma used to tell it in that awful whisper which went on and on through the long hot nights when she could not sleep and it was my job to wet the cool cloths required for her forehead which I did faithfully. I loved my mamma. But I was GLAD when she died, I know this is a sin. I have not told it before. But I am writing it down anyway as Nora Gwyn said and I will write it all down every true thing in black and white upon the page, for evil or good it is my own true life and I WILL have it. I will. I am the legal ward of my uncle Junius Jefferson Hall who is not really my uncle at all but my mothers first cousin a wise and mournful man who has done the best he could for us all I reckon. We ar...

eAudiobook
eBook

Audio Books
eBook

f80e00fe-4a2c-8926-c7dd-6fba2e553c6c

9781449896430
9781565126589

2023-05-28T09:28:51.042Z

-1

Fiction

Fiction

Online OverDrive

Addison Public Library Online

Online OverDrive Collection

9781565126589

2006
2007

Algonquin Books
Recorded Books, Inc

grouped_work

Electronic books
FICTION -- General
FICTION -- Historical
FICTION / Historical
FICTION / Literary
Fiction
Historical
Historical fiction
History
Literary
North Carolina
North Carolina -- Fiction
Orphans
Orphans -- Fiction
Plantations
Plantations -- Fiction
Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877) -- Fiction
Reconstruction (United States : 1865-1877)
Teenage girls
Teenage girls -- Fiction
United States

On Agate Hill A Novel

On Agate Hill : a novel / Lee Smith
On Agate Hill : a novel [electronic resource] / Lee Smith
On Agate Hill A Novel
On Agate Hill [electronic resource] / Lee Smith

On Agate Hill

A Novel

Electronic books
FICTION
FICTION / Historical
FICTION / Literary
Fiction
General
Historical
Historical Fiction
Literary
Literature
Orphans
Plantations
Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)
Teenage girls