Rowing in Eden

by Elizabeth Evans and Elizabeth Evans

Book Overview

Pynch Lake is quiet nine months of the year but bursts into life each summer when the vacationers arrive. In the summer of 1965, year-round residents Harold and Peg Wahl find the world that once belonged to them is now being taken over by their older daughters, returned from college for the summer. Cool and self-possessed Rosamund is receiving the attention of the family friend who formerly courted Peg. Martie is filling the house with parties...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060954701
• ISBN13: 9780060954703
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Another haunting, beautiful book from Elizabeth Evans

With Franny Wahl, the almost fourteen-year-old heroine of Elizabeth Evans fine third novel, Evans has created a character that is at once endearing and terrifying, as are any and all fourteen-year-old girls. In the summer of 1965, Franny's sexuality blooms right under her distracted parents' noses, even as her middle sister, Martie--the observably wild one--sics their alcohol-fueled father on Franny's college age suitor, Ryan Marvell.As the story progressed, I took every step with Franny: holding back on answering the phone until at least two rings, gazing at the fence where she once sat talking with her beloved and most importantly, Franny's efforts at discovering how to give and receive love without giving up too much of herself. By the end of the book, I began to empathize even with Franny's parents, hard-drinking, impecunious Brick and relentlessy busy Peg. They are simply confused and overwhelmed with the ways that their world has changed. Franny Wahl is a girl I believe as much as I believe my own, long ago, fourteen-year-old self.