{"id":8615,"date":"2010-10-04T06:00:55","date_gmt":"2010-10-04T12:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=8615"},"modified":"2010-09-29T10:47:51","modified_gmt":"2010-09-29T16:47:51","slug":"the-sisters-from-hardscrabble-bay-by-beverly-jensen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/the-sisters-from-hardscrabble-bay-by-beverly-jensen\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay by Beverly Jensen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Idella and Avis are\u00a0The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay<\/a><\/em><\/strong>; the girls\u00a0learned early on to fend for themselves.\u00a0 In\u00a01916,\u00a0their family is barely scraping out a living on\u00a0a rocky\u00a0potato farm in New Brunswick,\u00a0when their mother unexpectantly dies in childbirth. The girls, ages seven and five, are left\u00a0in the care of an overwhelmed father who turns to alcohol for comfort.\u00a0 Though\u00a0Dad\u00a0tries\u00a0to create a semblance of normalcy by hiring\u00a0 a series of French Canadian housegirls,\u00a0none stay\u00a0for long, and after a few years,\u00a0he ships the girls across the border for a short stay at a boarding school in Maine.<\/p>\n

Idella grows up to be the responsible older sister — always caring for someone.\u00a0 First, it’s for her father, after he is accidentally shot when\u00a0hunting deer\u00a0out of season;\u00a0 later, she cares for\u00a0her very contrary mother-in-law.\u00a0 On the other hand, Avis is the wild one — a\u00a0free spirit who likes to drink and who runs through men,\u00a0 but often pays painful consequences for her impulsive choices, including a stint in prison.\u00a0 Still, all is not heartbreak in this story of family ties and remarkable resilience — there are equal doses of humor and hilarity as well.<\/p>\n

What I found most intriguing about this book is that\u00a0the author, Beverly Jensen, died of pancreatic cancer in 2003, never having published a word of her writing.\u00a0\u00a0 So how did this book come to be?\u00a0 Well, a group of supporters gathered around her work, initially getting one of the chapters of this book published as an award-winning short story.\u00a0\u00a0Amazingly, the stories all fit together with convicing continuity and\u00a0the author’s voice\u00a0comes through loud and clear, even beyond the grave.\u00a0 Every writer should have such friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Idella and Avis are\u00a0The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay; the girls\u00a0learned early on to fend for themselves.\u00a0 In\u00a01916,\u00a0their family is barely scraping out a living on\u00a0a rocky\u00a0potato farm in New Brunswick,\u00a0when their mother unexpectantly dies in childbirth. The girls, ages seven and five, are left\u00a0in the care of an overwhelmed father[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,8],"tags":[1018,155,748,391],"class_list":["post-8615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-staff-picks","tag-canada","tag-family","tag-hardship","tag-sisters"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-2eX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8615"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8734,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8615\/revisions\/8734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}