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    Valentine: A Novel
    Valentine: A Novel
    Valentine: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    Valentine: A Novel

    Written by Elizabeth Wetmore

    Narrated by Cassandra Campbell and Jenna Lamia

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!

    Written with the haunting emotional power of Elizabeth Strout and Barbara Kingsolver, an astonishing debut novel that explores the lingering effects of a brutal crime on the women of one small Texas oil town in the 1970s.

    Mercy is hard in a place like this . . .

    It’s February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom. While the town’s men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems to follow.

    In the early hours of the morning after Valentine’s Day, fourteen-year-old Gloria Ramírez appears on the front porch of Mary Rose Whitehead’s ranch house, broken and barely alive. The teenager had been viciously attacked in a nearby oil field—an act of brutality that is tried in the churches and barrooms of Odessa before it can reach a court of law. When justice is evasive, the stage is set for a showdown with potentially devastating consequences.

    Valentine is a haunting exploration of the intersections of violence and race, class and region in a story that plumbs the depths of darkness and fear, yet offers a window into beauty and hope. Told through the alternating points of view of indelible characters who burrow deep in the reader’s heart, this fierce, unflinching, and surprisingly tender novel illuminates women’s strength and vulnerability, and reminds us that it is the stories we tell ourselves that keep us alive.

    Editor's Note

    #ReadWithJenna…

    Jenna Bush Hager selected Elizabeth Wetmore’s debut novel as her April 2020 #ReadWithJenna TODAY Show pick. It’s a story about small-town Texas in the mid-1970s, as a community reels from an act of violence and economic upheaval. “For anybody looking for a great escape, this is a wonderful book,” Hager said in the announcement post.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMar 31, 2020
    ISBN9780062984739
    Valentine: A Novel
    Author

    Elizabeth Wetmore

    Elizabeth Wetmore is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in Epoch, Kenyon Review, Colorado Review, Baltimore Review, Crab Orchard Review, Iowa Review, and other literary journals. She is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, as well as a grant from the Barbara Deming Foundation. She was also a Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction at Bread Loaf and a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony, and one of six Writers in Residence at Hedgebrook. A native of West Texas, she lives and works in Chicago.

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    Reviews for Valentine

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      “You raise a family in Midland but you raise hell in Odessa.”
      Odessa, Texas 1976...it’s a hot brutal terrain, not kind to man or animals and even crueler to women. A story that begins with a brutal rape quickly becomes a narrative of female companionship, championship and camaraderie. A brilliant unforgettable debut. Perfect narration.
      Mary Rose might just be my favorite fictional character EVER ?????

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      This book took me a while to finish. And it doesn’t feel like I finished it. It just seemed so unresolved with everything. I did enjoy how descriptive it was. I love books with different perspectives, however, this book had too many. It was hard to keep up with everyone. I also was not a fan of the going back and forth from the ‘present’ to the ‘past’. It may have been easier to notice the difference in the book but on the audiobook, it all just flowed together. It would go in and out of a memory and I wouldn’t be able to tell unless it mentioned someone not around.
      It was an interesting book but I kind of feel let down. I listened to the entire book and it just feels like the wasn’t much of a plot other than how one guy made several people’s lives living hell.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This was quite a journey. The book started out fast paced can’t put down to a slower more curious slow burn by the end. It really highlights gender differences of what I’d like to think are less now than years ago but that would be naive and filled with my own privilege. Enjoyable with a couple pearls of wisdom from the Uncle at the end.
    • 4/5
      Probably the most surprising thing about this book is that it is the authors first book. The writing is very strong! The book has a story that runs through the whole book about a teenage girl who is brutally raped, but each chapter is about one of the 4-6 other characters in the book, so it is almost like a series of short stories with the one common element in the background. It would have been nice if the book was more cohesive, but otherwise it is definitely a well written book.
    • 2/5
      This story took be a while to get through. Although the first 2 perspectives caught my attention, the rest of the story developed a very slow pace. It also had confusing tenses, as I had to go back a few times to figure out if we were in the past or present tense. I also felt that it had an Unresolved ending. All in all, it was a bit disappointing.

    • 5/5
      Captivating story, loved hearing from different characters. Well written! Great!
    • 5/5
      Very descriptive and truly captures what life is like for women in W Texas, midwest too, during this time period. What seems abhorrent treatment of women seems tolerable in comparison to the treatment of Mexicans. The author honestly painted a complete picture of life in this area during this time. This isn't an uplifting book, however, it is a book about survival and inequality in this great country.
    • 5/5
      This book is kind of amazing; I'm not sure why more people aren't talking about it. Each woman's or girl's voice lends another layer to the story's theme. A terrific listen, well performed, that does credit to the lyrical prose of the author.
    • 5/5
      This is the best book I have "read" in a long time. It's beautifully written and narrated, and was a complete joy to listen to. I didn't want it to end! I only wish it wasn't the author's first novel so that I could go out and find another one.
    • 5/5
      Valentine allows readers to glimpse the life of young girls and women trying to find their way in the 70’s in a world dominated by men...heart wrenching yes but their story needs to be told and you will not lay this book down until they finish.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book. I wouldn’t say it was amazing but definitely entertaining. I do however believe the narration was top notch
    • 4/5
      Valentine is a powerful, hard, debut novel. Set in 1976 Odessa, TX, a vast, desolate land, where oil drilling reigns. The story revolves around the rape of a 14-year old Mexican girl, and told from five women's/girl's points of view. Times are tough, and the men are tougher, racists and misogynists, justice non-existent. Throughout the book, the author's love of the land and the characters she created is evident and strong. She makes you feel the desolation and the desperation, and root for the main characters, each dealing with their own personal tragedies.
    • 2/5
      There were too many characters in this story to make it a good read. There was just too much jumping back and forth. I did not care for this book and would not recommend it.
    • 5/5
      To Say Goodbye. This was an interesting story that starts out in the aftermath of a brutal rape... and never really gets any lighter. A dark look at West Texas in the oil boom of the late 70s, this is one of those tales where you're looking from several different perspectives - each chapter is labeled not by number, but from the view it is focusing on - to get a view into a large swath of the bigger picture through individuals' thoughts. The ending gets a bit wonky, with one perspective in particular thrown in for seemingly no real reason (though it does give a bit of a coda to one particular plot point, but spends far too much time doing things other than this), but the final few lines are an appropriate ending, and honestly better than some of the foreboding foreshadowing that preceded it. Very much recommended.
    • 2/5
      I kept with this because I liked reading about the west Texas setting. Mostly though, it just felt like a refrigerator-girl trope novel, only in this case the brutal attack on a young Latina served mainly to forward the plot of the white characters (mostly women). It could have been a good read--I did like the other storylines--but the fact that the POV that jumps around every chapter to nearly entirely avoid Glory's felt pretty glaring omission to me.
    • 4/5
      Odessa, Texas in 1976 isn’t an easy place to make a living, especially if you’re a woman. You are expected to know your place, and woe be to the few that dare to challenge the status quo. The terrain is rough and unforgiving, the oil boom is taking its toll on the residents, and a shocking and violent crime against a 14 year old local girl sends reverberations all throughout the town. This sweeping tale is told by different residents and how the effects of this crime seep into their lives. The author infuses her debut novel with a lyrical prose, beautifully detailing the Texas landscape, and her characters. You feel the longing that each character harbors and the weight of words untold. Each female narrator is unique and when their chapter ended, I eagerly anticipated their next passage. There was no need for a male perspective in this book, especially once you read about the many misdeeds done by the men of Odessa; you are made clearly aware of their feelings and how they would taint the story to fit their own narrative in their favor. My only complaint about this book was how unprepared I was for the ending. I thought I had more pages to go and I was already on the final page. I became heavily invested in several characters, particularly Glory and Mary Rose, and I longed for another chapter from them. I look forward to reading Elizabeth Wetmore’s next book.
    • 4/5
      1976 Odessa, Texas. The book begins with a rape of young 14-year-old girl, Gloria Ramirez, by an older white man, Dale Strickland, the son of a preacher, who bears no remorse for what he's done. Subsequent chapters trace the aftermath, but rather than focusing solely on Gloria's story, this book tells five separate stories, of five women, loosely connected by life but caught in the same painful, stifling misery. Some reviewers didn't like the constant shifting among the five women narrators, but to me it suggested their fate was inescapable; every woman, not just one or two, experienced pain with a different source. The only help for it was to grab the car keys and drive out of town because the brutality in Odessa is pervasive and systemic, tainting every aspect of life. In Wetmore's hands, oil is at once the source of material wealth and a metaphor for the darkness, the crudeness that is inheres in very bedrock of the town. At one point, the oil erupts from a new well, completely out of control, stinking and sliming across the ground, blackening the land and smothering through slow death all the plants in its way. So here, the football players suffer concussions--"they have their bell rung a little"--and keep on playing. Pastor Rob preaches the evils of desegregation: it's like "locking a cow, a mountain lion, and a possum in the same barn together, then being surprised when somebody gets eaten." And a white man who rapes a Hispanic girl gets away with it. The few attempts at kindness--the young girl DA trying to help a Vietnam veteran, a woman testifying on Gloria's behalf--end badly, with vicious threats and near-fatal consequences. My one difficulty with the book is that while circumstances change--Mary Rose moves off her ranch and into town; Glory leaves Texas for Mexico with her uncle--I didn't find that the characters change. That is, there's change but not much, if any, evidence of psychological growth, and I look for that in a book. That said, Wetmore has built a dark world and a relentlessly harrowing tale, with language that is strong and poetic. I'll be interested to see what she writes next.
    • 4/5
      The brutal rape of a 14-year old Mexican girl, Gloria Ramirez, by a white teenaged boy sets off a firestorm of controversy in Odessa, Texas. Gloria manages to make her way after a night of horror to the home of Mary Rose on a ranch in the middle of barren land. While keeping Gloria safe, she is confronted by the rapist, who has followed Gloria to her home. When Mary Rose agrees to testify at the trial, many in the community are outraged based on Gloria's race. There are those who don't consider it a crime because she willingly got into the boy's truck. Others discount it because she is Mexican and the boy is white. Gloria has suffered great physical damage requiring surgery after the brutal beating, as well as struggling with the emotional impact. Adding to that, her mother is deported as an illegal. Mary Rose attempts to bring justice for an unforgiveable crime, and the aftermath of the trial has a great impact on her life.A haunting question is posed and answered in this book is: "Why did God give oil to West Texas? To make up for what He did to the land." These are richly-drawn characters in an unforgiving landscape that brings out both the best and worst in its inhabitants.
    • 4/5
      A 14 year old Mexican girl is assaulted and raped by a local in a small town in Odessa Texas. The book is the story of how the women of that small town dealt with the crime. Mary Rose and Corrine, the two main characters of the book were interesting to read about. The racism, sexism and bigotry of the times is not sugar coated but I felt this story did not get to me as I thought it would.
    • 3/5
      The fallout from a terrible crime committed against a child, set in 1970's Odessa TX. It was an interesting story but, for such an emotional subject, I felt very disconnected from the characters which preventing me from enjoying the read as much as I thought I would.
    • 4/5
      The setup for this character study of several women and the place they inhabit (Odessa Texas) is as follows:Glory, a 14 year old Mexican girl, is raped in a deserted oil field near Odessa, Texas on Valentine's night 1976. Brutally beaten and traumatized, she makes her way to a nearby ranch house after her attacker passes out. There, hugely pregnant Mary Rose, who lives there with her husband and young daughter, takes Glory in, calls the sheriff, and fends off the rapist until help arrives.This is not a crime novel however. Instead, it is the story of the aftermath of a violent crime and the effect it had on a small town, particularly its women, all told from multiple points of view of the women of that town. Along the way it explores issues of sexism (Was the rape Glory's "fault"? Afterall she voluntarily got into the guy's truck.) and racism (Glory was Mexican, why should it matter what happens to her?) Along the way, we meet some outstanding characters. Mary Rose fears living on the isolated ranch after the incident and moves to town. She must defy her husband in order to testify against the rapist. After she agrees to testify, she receives threats, and fears for herself and her daughter. Corinne, a former school teacher who is dealing with the loss of her husband, lives across the street from Mary Rose and is eccentric, outspoken, and individualistic. Suzanne, is a perfect housewife (and Avon Lady) whose facade is actually compensating for her "white trash" upbringing. And most of all there's 10 year old Debra Ann (or DA) whose mother has just skipped town, leaving her neglected, but giving her the opportunity to come across a homeless Vietnam vet she adopts and helps. (Perhaps I liked her so much because she is my namesake, spelled differently--I'm Deborah Ann).The Washington Post described this as a book about how women particularly those "without much education or money--negotiate a culture of male brutality." For character, and evocation of place, this was a very strong book.3 1/2 stars
    • 4/5
      It's quite a feat that there are a handful of perspectives here and Wetmore writes so that you immediately empathize with these women. But then again, how could you not empathize with women in 1970's Texas? With so much against them -- even the land or the violence of men who can get away with anything? I just want to pluck these characters out of the book to give them a chance. It's tough for everyone really though. It seems lives are controlled by four things only: oil, drought, tornadoes or cattle. Wetmore's writing is brutal yet beautiful. It reminded me of a less magical realist 'Swamplandia', 'To Kill A Mockingbird', Flannery O'Connor's starkness and the lonely (but not lonely enough to avoid trouble) deserty feel of 'The Never Open Desert Diner' by James Anderson.
    • 5/5
      West Texas. 1976. Pumpjacks, rattlers, heat and dust. Glory, a fourteen year old Mexican girl is brutally attacked by a young, pick-up driving roughneck. She appears on the front porch of a rancher's wife, naked and broken. The rest of the novel unfolds in alternating view points, each featuring a woman, that has been touched by Glory's assault. It also explores the injustices and trials of being a woman in a male-dominated world. This is tough stuff and the author handles it all with a deft and insightful approach. She grew up in this region and you can feel it on every page. An impressive debut and one of my favorite surprise reads of the year.
    • 5/5
      I'm not always a fan of a book that has multiple narrators, but it works in Valentine. A horrific event told through the eyes of women in the community. It makes one wonder, what would you do? How would you help? Can gossip and misconceptions be stopped? The perspectives are spot on and unfold perfectly. A gripping novel for those that root for the underdog, the misunderstood, the minorities.
    • 3/5
      The first chapter tells the story of a brutal rape of a 14 year old Mexican girl, Glory, and her appearance at the home of Mary Rose in a rural area of Texas near Odessa. Mary Rose calls the sheriff and the young man is arrested. The rest of the novel focuses on different characters in the town. Mary Rose's husband is furious that she must testify at the trial. Mary Rose moves into town across from Corrine, a retired English teacher whose husband has just committed suicide rather than succumb to a terrible disease. Debra Ann is a young girl whose mother has left her; Corrine unwillingly takes her under her wing.Although the story is set in the 1970's the people of Odessa all come across as bigots especially the men. And, probably this is west Texas.
    • 4/5
      4.5 West Texas is not kind to women. This book tells their story - they all overlap in various ways in their town of Odessa, TX in 1976 and despite different angles, all have the same issue: powerlessness. A harrowing event at the very start of the book on Valentine's Day forms the center from which their stories fan out. Gloria Ramirez, 14 is brutally raped by a roughneck (Dale Strickland) in a remote oil field and she lands on the front porch of Mary Rose Whitehead's cattle farm with Dale in pursuit. A very pregnant Mary Rose takes Glory in immediately and fends off Dale until the police arrive, and at that moment invites a whole heap of trouble into her life. Due to the time period and the fact that Glory willingly got into Dale's truck at the drive-in, the case is shaky from the start. Mary Rose moves to town with her young daughter Amy as her safety seems compromised out in the country, even though Dale is in custody. There are plenty of haters who don't think she should testify for Glory, who is Mexican. In town, she meets neighbors Corrine Shepherd, a spunky widow who is drowning (and booze) in grief for her dead husband. She can barely stand to be among the living. Suzanne Ledbetter is the "perfect" neighborhood Mom who sells Avon and Tupperware and is always perfectly organized and attired. However, this is her facade for her "white trash" upbringing and her determination to never be wholly reliant upon a man, or anyone else. Amy befriends D.A. (Deborah Anne) Pierce, a feral neighborhood child whose mother left months ago and whose father works long hours in the oil fields and can't look after her. That summer with the Ramirez case on everyone's mind and in everyone's gossip, the women all increase watchfulness over their daughters, D.A. included. But she is wily and independent and befriends a man living in a drain pipe at the edge of their neighborhood. Jesse Belden is a Vietman vet who was tricked into TX from TN by his older cousin who ditched him when he came out for work. He becomes D.A.'s "project" when she discovers him and she steals from all the neighbors to bring him food, blankets, medicine. Suspense builds about his character and motives. Lots of issues circling here, but they are all faced head on by these amazing women who each tell their story and stick to their guns (literally - it is TX afterall!) The barren but lucrative landscape is definitely a character here and a lot of local flavor, but a universal 70s childhood is depicted with days spent on bikes and little oversight, all shadowed by man's inhumanity to woman. Excellent story telling!
    • 5/5
      Set in the harsh land of the soft drawl, Valentine is a debut that is infused with the sublime hell that is the 1970's Texas oil boom. A story of mastering the land this is not; it is instead, a love letter to the characters and how they find a way to cope with the unease that comes with where they live. Wetmore's writing burns with an invisible hope. Beautiful and raw in its imagery, I found my mind floating back to moments in book while reading; the characters calling me from the pages long after I thought I was done reading.

    • 4/5
      I loved a lot about Valentine, it had five star potential, I’m just a little torn over the way it was told. I don’t really understand why some books omit quotation marks but that’s the case here. There isn’t a ton of dialogue in Valentine so this wasn’t a huge issue though it took some getting used to and there were definitely a few times where it momentarily pulled me out of the story, where I was like, oh, wait, that was said out loud? I don’t think I’ve ever heard an explanation for why this structure (or lack of structure) is sometimes employed, it just seems like an unnecessarily distracting choice. My feelings about the number of points of view in Valentine is mixed. Each of these women are written with depth but the opening of the book hooked me on Glory’s story and so I was resistant to the chapters that took me away from knowing what was going on with her. Corinne, Debra Ann, Ginny, Suzanne, and Karla, they interested me, it’s just they didn’t interest me as much as the story I signed up for, which was Glory trying to figure out how to go on after such a violent attack and Mary Rose facing backlash for rightfully siding with her. I definitely see value in the chapters devoted to those other women and I would have loved to read them in a short story collection, but for the purposes of this book, my preference most definitely would have been to cut their participation down to mostly those aspects that connect them to the central plot and instead give more chapters over to Glory, I mean, I could have read an entire book of just her life at that hotel and the pool and felt completely satisfied. It was strange to me how little Glory actually featured in this book when her segments were easily the most emotionally engaging and her journey more of a battle than any of the other women here faced. This author’s talent is obvious in how atmospheric Valentine is in both place and time, how dimensional and authentic her characters were, the writing here is five stars, it’s just the execution of the storytelling, the times where it veered further away from Glory than I was willing to go, where it lost me the littlest bit.
    • 5/5
      A young Mexican girl is raped and beaten. Told from the viewpoint of the victim, witness, children, and others. What are a victim's rights and obligations in court? What is a woman's role, any woman, during this time? What does prejudice look like? Poverty? Widowhood? A vet's PTSD? Cruelty? Kindness?Set in 1976 Texas during an oil boom. Full of complex characters with no easy answers and no simple justice.I couldn't put this debut novel down and I look forward to many more from Elizabeth Wetmore.
    • 4/5
      While there is a powerful plot, this is so much more than that - it is very much a tale of time and place.