Beneficence
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Cassandra Campbell
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Rachel Jacobs
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Tom Taylorson
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By:
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Meredith Hall
About this listen
A family’s only hope to heal their shattered lives is that love is stronger than grief.
When they meet in the 1930s, Doris and Tup’s love is immediate. They marry quickly and Doris commits to the only life Tup ever wanted: working the Senter family farm, where his parents and grandparents and great-grandparents are buried under the old pines. Their lives follow the calming rhythms of the land - chores in the cow barn, haying the fields, tending their gardens - and in this they find immeasurable joy.
Soon their first child, Sonny, is born and Doris and Tup understand they are blessed. More children arrive - precocious, large-hearted Dodie and quiet, devoted Beston - but Doris and Tup take nothing for granted. They are grateful every day for the grace of their deep bonds to each other, to their family, and to their bountiful land. As they hold fast to this contentment, Doris is uneasy, and confesses, “We can’t ever know what will come.”
When an unimaginable tragedy turns the family of five into a family of four, everything the Senters held faith in is shattered. The family is consumed by a dark shadow of grief and guilt. Slowly, the surviving Senters must find their way to forgiveness - of themselves and of each other.
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- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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On a farm in western Missouri, during the first half of the twentieth century, Matthew and Callie Soames create a life for themselves and raise four headstrong daughters. Jessica will break their hearts. Leonie will fall in love with the wrong man. Mary Jo will escape to New York. And wild child Mathy’s fate will be the family’s greatest tragedy. Over the decades they will love, deceive, comfort, forgive - and, ultimately, they will come to cherish all the more fiercely the bonds of love that hold the family together.
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I didn't want it to end!!!
- By Amanda H. on 01-20-21
By: Jetta Carleton
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Lighthouse
- By: Eugenia Price
- Narrated by: Tessa Richards
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Raised in post-Revolution Granville, Massachusetts, James Gould could only imagine the beauty and warmth of the lands to the south. It was there that he longed to build bridges and lighthouses from his very own designs and plans. His gripping story unfolds as Gould follows his dream to the raw settlement of Bangor on the Penobscot River, St. Simons Island off the coast of Georgia, lawless Spanish East Florida, and back - at last and finally - to St. Simons.
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Re: Wonderful Story
- By Cmorgan on 01-27-23
By: Eugenia Price
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Mercy Among the Children
- A Novel
- By: David Adams Richards
- Narrated by: Bernard Clark
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Sydney Henderson is a truly great man. As a young man, Sydney, believing he has accidentally killed a friend, makes a pact with God, promising never to harm another if the boy's life is spared. In the years that follow, the almost pathologically gentle Sydney holds true to his promise - at terrible cost to himself and his family. Stunningly beautiful and haunting, scenes from this magisterial novel will remain etched in the mind forever.
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Epic story
- By jhar14 on 06-04-22
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The Dream House
- By: Craig Higginson
- Narrated by: Terry Lloyd-Roberts
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
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A farmhouse is being reproduced a dozen times, with slight variations, throughout a valley. Three small graves have been dug in the front garden, the middle one lying empty. A woman in a wheelchair sorts through boxes while her husband clambers around the old demolished buildings, wondering where the animals have gone. A young woman – called ‘the barren one’ behind her back – dreams of love, while an ageing headmaster contemplates the end of his life.
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Brilliant Dream House Narration
- By Simon Griffiths on 05-05-21
By: Craig Higginson
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Girl in Hyacinth Blue
- By: Susan Vreeland
- Narrated by: Loren Lester, Sheryl Bernstein
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
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A professor shows a colleague a painting that he has kept secret for decades. The professor swears it is a Vermeer - but why has he hidden this important work for so long? The reasons unfold in a series of stories that trace ownership of the painting back to World War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the work's inspiration.
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wonderful
- By Sybil on 04-07-03
By: Susan Vreeland
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The First Man
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In The First Man, Albert Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own. Camus summons up the sights, sounds, and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother. The result is a moving journey through the lost landscape of youth that also discloses the wellsprings of Camus's aesthetic powers and moral vision.
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Great Narration by Jefferson Mays
- By Sean Patrick Stevens on 07-31-21
By: Albert Camus
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Good Poems
- Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor
- By: Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and others
- Narrated by: Garrison Keillor
- Length: 4 hrs and 23 mins
- Abridged
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Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence. It features the work of classic poets, such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, as well as the work of contemporary greats such as Howard Nemerov, Charles Bukowski, Donald Hall, Billy Collins, Robert Bly, and Sharon Olds Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence.
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Very good, but. . .
- By KSmith on 01-27-11
By: Emily Dickinson, and others
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The Beast That Never Was
- By: Caren J. Werlinger
- Narrated by: Justine Eyre
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Lise’s father is dead, and the life of plenty and freedom that she has known as the daughter of the King’s Huntsman is gone. She must now live a life of duty to her mother and sisters, helping them to cope in their altered circumstances. But where her mother would have her wed a childhood friend to secure their future, Lise knows that is not what she longs for.
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Classic fairytale remade into a lesbian romanc
- By Army Vet on 01-28-22
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Winesburg, Ohio
- By: Sherwood Anderson
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Winesburg, Ohio is a little-known masterpiece that forever changed the course of American storytelling. At the center of this collection of stories stands George Willard, an earnest young reporter for the Winesburg Eagle who sets out to gather the town’s daily news. He ends up discovering the town’s deepest secrets as one by one, the townsfolk confide their hopes, dreams, and fears to the reporter. In their recollections of first loves and last rites, of sprawling farms and winding country roads, the town rises vividly - and poignantly - to life.
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Isolation, Loneliness, Love & Midwest Grotesque
- By Darwin8u on 06-27-13
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Foster
- By: Claire Keegan
- Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
- Length: 1 hr and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas' house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end.
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A story that will stay with me a long time
- By CTKG on 11-01-22
By: Claire Keegan
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Annie Dunne
- By: Sebastian Barry
- Narrated by: Caroline Lennon
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1959 in Wicklow, Ireland, and Annie and her cousin Sarah are living and working together to keep Sarah’s small farm running. Suddenly, Annie’s young niece and nephew are left in their care. Unprepared for the chaos that two children inevitably bring, but nervously excited nonetheless, Annie finds the interruption of her normal life and her last chance at happiness complicated further by the attention being paid to Sarah by a local man with his eye on the farm.
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Splendid
- By Shady on 06-21-23
By: Sebastian Barry
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The Wapshot Chronicle
- By: John Cheever
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Based in part on Cheever's adolescence in New England, the novel follows the destinies of the impecunious and wildly eccentric Wapshots of St. Botolphs, a quintessential Massachusetts fishing village. Here are the stories of Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea dog and would-be suicide; of his licentious older son, Moses; and of Moses' adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly.
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Beautiful 1950s Great Expectations-like Novel
- By Darwin8u on 05-31-13
By: John Cheever
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Dalva
- A Novel
- By: Jim Harrison
- Narrated by: Chris Henry Coffey, Stacey Glemboski
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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From her home on the California coast, Dalva hears the broad silence of the Nebraska prairie where she was born, and longs for the son she gave up for adoption years before. Beautiful, fearless, tormented, at 45 she has lived a life of lovers and adventures. Now, Dalva begins a journey that will take her back to the bosom of her family, to the half-Sioux lover of her youth, and to a pioneering great-grandfather whose journals recount the bloody annihilation of the Plains Indians.
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As a woman, I can finally appreciate Jim Harrison with this book.
- By kathryn gray on 09-11-24
By: Jim Harrison
What listeners say about Beneficence
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- cantbackup
- 04-16-24
I didn’t just read this book. I joined this amazing family.
This is a remarkable book about a somewhat unremarkable, family. The author sculpts each character with many dimensions and many layers. You don’t just feel like you know them you feel like you are them. There is not a huge plot line, not a lot of conflict, but there is a great deal of intimacy and love. The reader though does not feel like a voyeur, but rather a participant in the family connections. One of the best of the decade.
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- Minna
- 08-04-22
.
Loved it! Quite heavy, but with mercy and beauty of life. Beautifully red also. Serendipity.
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- Ellen S
- 05-11-23
Not enjoyable or meaningful
I listened to this book in its entirety. I think I expected some revelation to make it all worthwhile that never came. The children were lovely characters. But despite relating to the enormous sorrow of losing their son, I simply could not like or understand the parents.
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- Gloria
- 11-14-22
amazing family story
loved this story. it really pulled me in and kept me there. such feelings of love and despair. I hated it to end.
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- TTay
- 01-10-24
Good story.
It was a good story overall. A bit slow and depressing at times. An accurate description for the era I assume.
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- Jodi Paloni
- 06-13-22
Fabulous!
A highly satisfying listening experience. These characters and their family stories will stay with me.
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- Robin
- 12-02-20
Brilliant! The best crafted story I've ever read.
The story bobs and weaves around its family. Excellent narration. A must read that will pull you in, twist you up, make you laugh and smile, and bring tears to your eyes. Absolutely brilliant.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-02-21
Life is a four letter word
Here is a book that unfolds like a Fairytale.
I was reminded early on of my mom’s wisdom, at age 98,”If it sounds too good to be true it probably is”...
The harsh realities of the vicissitudes of life come to this perfect family, as they come eventually to all of us: how we cope, or don’t, or can’t, become evident in Beneficent.
Life is a four letter word and Meredith Hall eloquently expound on one farm families’life, losses, & redemption through perseverance, through tolerating one another’s foibles and imperfections and their strategies of coping with loss.💞💞💞💞💞
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4 people found this helpful
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- TeaLily
- 04-30-22
Do not read the about section.
I don’t usually read the about section because I feel at times it gives the story away. I will listen to a sample of a book and read some reviews (not the spoilers). Then I’ll decide if I will listen. I found this book because I absolutely love Tom Taylorson’s & Cassandra Campbell’s voice.
This isn’t my normal genre of preference but decided to give it a try and it did NOT disappoint at all.
I am speechless and that takes a lot to do. This book is incredible. I will never look at life the same. This book will stay with me through my journey of motherhood. I truly wish we all could go back to a more simpler of time.
I can not believe this book didn’t need a credit to be used. I look forward to additional books from Meredith Hall. I’m sad to see there’s only one additional book available from her.
Highly recommend but remember do not read the about section. It gives the book away.
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- Kelly Gilleran
- 04-13-22
5 stars
I love this story. It's raw, realistic and relatable. I'm partial to historical fiction and the rural setting of the novel. the characters are all well developed and easy to identify with. looking forward to more from this author.
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1 person found this helpful