Land of Love and Drowning
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Narrated by:
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Cherise Boothe
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Korey Jackson
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Rachel Leslie
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Myra Lucretia Taylor
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By:
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Tiphanie Yanique
About this listen
A major debut from an award-winning writer - an epic family saga set against the magic and the rhythms of the Virgin Islands.
In the early 1900s an important ship sinks into the Caribbean Sea, just as the Virgin Islands are transferred from Danish to American rule. Orphaned by the sunk vessel are two sisters and their half-brother, now faced with an uncertain identity and future. Each of them is unusually beautiful, and each is in possession of a particular magic that will either sink or save them.
Chronicling three generations of an island family from 1916 to the 1970s, Land of Love and Drowning is a novel of love and magic, set against the emergence of Saint Thomas into the modern world. Wholly unique, with echoes of Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and the author's own Caribbean family history, the story is told in a language and rhythm that evokes an entire world and way of life and love. Following the Bradshaw family through 60 years of fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, love affairs, curses, magical gifts, loyalties, births, deaths, and triumphs, Land of Love and Drowning is a gorgeous, vibrant debut by an exciting, prize-winning young writer.
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Anju and Sudha formed an astounding, almost psychic connection during their childhood in India. When Anju invites Sudha, a single mother in Calcutta, to come live with her and her husband, Sunil, in California, Sudha foolishly accepts, knowing full well that Sunil has long desired her. As Sunil's attraction rises to the surface, the trio must struggle to make sense of the freedoms of America - and of the ties that bind them to India and to one another.
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Vine of desire
- By Mz Shantay on 03-27-21
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Beyond the Pale
- By: Elana Dykewomon
- Narrated by: Elana Dykewomon
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Beyond the Pale - winner of the Lambda Literary Award - tells the stories of two Jewish women living through times of darkness and inhumanity in the early 20th century, capturing their undaunted love and courage in luminous and moving prose. The richly textured novel details Gutke Gurvich's odyssey from her apprenticeship as a midwife in a Russian shtetl to her work in the suffrage movement in New York.
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great historical fiction with a lesbian twist
- By Kelly on 11-25-13
By: Elana Dykewomon
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In the Country
- Stories
- By: Mia Alvar
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Don Castro
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.
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My introduction to Filipino literature and culture
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16
By: Mia Alvar
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Paradise
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In Paradise - her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain", assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, Paradise tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void.
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MORRISON AT HER MOST COMPLEX
- By Kennedi Hill on 11-07-19
By: Toni Morrison
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The Blue Between Sky and Water
- By: Susan Abulhawa
- Narrated by: Jennifer Woodward
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1947, and Beit Daras, a quiet village in Palestine surrounded by olive groves, is home to the Baraka family. Eldest daughter Nazmiyeh looks after her widowed mother, prone to wandering and strange outbursts, while her brother, Mamdouh, tends to the village bees. Their younger sister, Mariam, with her striking mismatched eyes, spends her days talking to imaginary friends and writing.
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Horrible pronunciation
- By Debra Sabah Press on 11-08-18
By: Susan Abulhawa
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The Seas
- By: Samantha Hunt, Maggie Nelson - introduction
- Narrated by: Samantha Hunt
- Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Moored in a coastal fishing town so far north that the highways only run south, the unnamed narrator of The Seas is a misfit. She's often the subject of cruel local gossip. Her father, a sailor, walked into the ocean 11 years earlier and never returned, leaving his wife and daughter to keep a forlorn vigil. Surrounded by water and beckoned by the sea, she clings to what her father once told her: that she is a mermaid.
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bizarre and interesting.
- By Sadie on 03-11-21
By: Samantha Hunt, and others
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The Cigar Factory
- A Novel of Charleston
- By: Michele Moore
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Cassie McGonegal and her niece, Brigid, work upstairs in the factory rolling cigars by hand. Meliah Amey Ravenel works in the basement, where she stems the tobacco. While both white and black workers suffer in the harsh working conditions of the factory and both endure the sexual harassment of the foremen, segregation keeps them from recognizing their common plight until the Tobacco Workers Strike of 1945.
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A Tale of Two Charlestons
- By Susie on 08-10-16
By: Michele Moore
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Island of a Thousand Mirrors
- By: Nayomi Munaweera
- Narrated by: Priya Ayyar
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Yasodhara tells the story of her own Sinhala family, rich in love, with everything they could ask for. As a child in idyllic Colombo, social hierarchies, their parents’ ambitions, teenage love shape Yasodhara and her siblings’ lives, and, subtly, the differences between Tamil and Sinhala people; but the peace is shattered by the tragedies of war. Yasodhara's family escapes to Los Angeles. But Yasodhara's life has already become intertwined with a young Tamil girl's.
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Pronunciation
- By Mahidevran on 04-07-18
By: Nayomi Munaweera
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Rush Home Road
- By: Lori Lansens
- Narrated by: Ruby Dee
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Abridged
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When a 70-year-old woman finds a five-year-old girl abandoned on her doorstep, she is thrust into a sorrowful past that can only be conquered with the help of the girl who opened her memory - the very girl she is trying to save. This first novel, according to author Jacquelyn Mitchard, is one of "exquisite power, honesty, and conviction...quite nearly without flaws."
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filthy language and violent content
- By Anna on 12-16-11
By: Lori Lansens
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Douglass' Women
- By: Jewell Parker Rhodes
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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The best-selling author of Voodoo Dreams focuses on two women who loved the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Anna, a free woman of color, was his rescuer, his loving wife and mother to his children. Ottilie Assing, a white German woman, became his intellectual soul mate and mistress. At times, they all lived under the same roof.
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Captivating
- By MJ on 02-09-24
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The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove
- A Novel
- By: Susan Gregg Gilmore
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Bezellia Grove was born into the most prominent of Nashville families, but that didn’t stop her from having an alcoholic mother and a distant, adulterous father. Her nanny, Maizelle, and Nathaniel, the handyman, are the people who have taken care of her since she can remember. She considers them family, but her parents just consider them servants because they are Black. When Bezellia has a clandestine romance with Nathaniel's son, Whites and Blacks unite in fury at the young couple.
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light southern fiction
- By suzanne on 02-08-13
What listeners say about Land of Love and Drowning
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- N.
- 07-16-15
Delicious like stewed cherries
I very much enjoyed this book. I the narration and cadence was very very good. The only improvement would have been to use Virgin Islands accents. I am from St. Croix. My mother from St. Thomas and the narrators were certainly not from those places. Also some of the words were mispronounced, like St. Johnian. But still an excellent book.
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- Jessica
- 09-01-24
Vivid characters and evocations of the Caribbean.
This is a complex story set in the Caribbean with engaging characters striving toward fulfilling relationships and a dignified life.
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- Carrissa
- 04-12-17
TW: incest
This is a beautifully written book, truly lovely language. Trigger warning: this novel is full of many types and layers of incest, which will naturally be very disturbing and/or triggering for some of us.
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2 people found this helpful
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- marea
- 08-10-14
Worth the Effort
It took me a long time, like 2/3s of the book, to finally be caught up in this story, but it turned out to be a good story. Unfortunately I had read a comparison of this book to those of Garcia Marquez, and that preset my expectations. While it isn't a Garcia Marquez-like novel, it is a good story with many generations and their histories and stories entwined. I liked the pace of the readers, their accents, and the history of the Virgin Islands.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amy Forslund-Amos
- 06-14-15
Not historical fiction.
Incestuous romance disguised as historical fiction. Another publisher who has taken my hard earned funds, forced me to try to salvage something in continuing to listen to a so-so narrator. An annoying story with emphasis on beauty and cunning in lieu of facts woven into an authentic saga concerning how the US obtained the Virginia islands. Do not waste your time or money.
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- ayodele higgs
- 02-07-16
Great Listen
I loved the poet style the author used. In addition she shows characters that have suffered great tragedies but have survived and even flourished. Eons and Annette are heroines in different ways.
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- Allison
- 08-04-15
great Virgin Islands story
loved this book. great story, great imagination and great characters. need more carribbean stories like this one.
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- Lauren
- 04-28-17
Moving an enthralling story
Lovely performances and beautiful imagery makes this audio book a positively wonderful listen. Highly recommended!
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- Kerry C. Howery
- 06-06-15
loved loved
loved the story and the narrator! Some parts of the story deals with subject matter that is taboo but this story keeps you wanting more and more
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- Dawn Books
- 09-21-23
Mesmerizing
Mesmerizing and difficult. You fall in love with the characters and hate them all at once. I could not put the book down.
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