The curing season

de Leslie Wells

Written in a mesmerizing prose that lays bare a woman's soul, this debut novel fits firmly in the tradition of Janet Fitch's White Oleander and Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina. It is a haunting depiction of adversity and the forces that can help a woman break free. In 1948, southern Virginia's rich tobacco country has its poor. Cora Slaughter's family is one of them. Book-smart and bright, Cora has the potential to rise above her hardscrabble existence and her father's alcoholic rages. If only, she dreams, there were enough money for her to go to college, if only she weren't lame, if only the right man would fall in love with her and take her away. . . .But Cora is teased and tormented by her schoolmates and the boys who flock after her pretty sister. No man even looks at her--until a handsome drifter named Aaron Melville comes around seeking farm work. Flattered by his attention, Cora begins to hope that Aaron can offer her a future. What she doesn't realize is that it will be one even more trying--and indeed terrifying--than the life she is fleeing. As her existence with Aaron unfolds, Cora falls into a heartbreaking apath