
The Fourth Child
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Cassandra Campbell
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By:
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Jessica Winter
About this listen
“A beautifully observed and thrillingly honest novel about the dark corners of family life and the long, complicated search for understanding and grace.”(Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation and Weather)
“The Fourth Child is keen and beautiful and heartbreaking - an exploration of private guilt and unexpected obligation, of the intimate losses of power embedded in female adolescence, and of the fraught moments of glancing divinity that come with shouldering the burden of love.” (Jia Tolentino, New York Times best-selling author of Trick Mirror)
“A remarkable family saga...The Fourth Child is a balm - a reminder that it is possible for art to provide a nuanced exploration of life itself.” (Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind and Rich and Pretty)
The author of Break in Case of Emergency follows up her the “extraordinary debut” (The Guardian) with a moving novel about motherhood and marriage, adolescence and bodily autonomy, family and love, religion and sexuality, and the delicate balance between the purity of faith and the messy reality of life.
Book-smart, devoutly Catholic, and painfully unsure of herself, Jane becomes pregnant in high school; by her early 20s, she is raising three children in the suburbs of western New York State. In the fall of 1991, as her children are growing older and more independent, Jane is overcome by a spiritual and intellectual restlessness that leads her to become involved with a local pro-life group. Following the tenets of her beliefs, she also adopts a little girl from Eastern Europe. But Mirela is a difficult child. Deprived of a loving caregiver in infancy, she remains unattached to her new parents, no matter how much love Jane shows her. As Jane becomes consumed with chasing therapies that might help Mirela, her relationships with her family, especially her older daughter, Lauren, begin to fray.
Feeling estranged from her mother and unsettled in her new high school, Lauren begins to discover the power of her own burgeoning creativity and sexuality - a journey that both echoes and departs from her mother’s own adolescent experiences. But when Lauren is confronted with the limits of her youth and independence, Jane is thrown into an emotional crisis, forced to reconcile her principles and faith with her determination to keep her daughters safe. The Fourth Child is a piercing love story and a haunting portrayal of how love can shatter - or strengthen - our beliefs.
©2021 Jessica Winter (P)2021 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Had potential
- By Bianca on 04-06-25
By: Kim Neville
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The Women of the Copper Country
- By: Mary Doria Russell
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In July 1913, 25-year-old Annie Clements had seen enough of the world to know that it was unfair. She’s spent her whole life in the copper-mining town of Calumet, Michigan, where men risk their lives for meager salaries - and had barely enough to put food on the table and clothes on their backs. The women labor in the houses of the elite and send their husbands and sons deep underground each day. When Annie decides to stand up for herself and the entire town of Calumet, nearly everyone believes she may have taken on more than she is prepared to handle.
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Great, but frustrating if you're a Michigander!
- By Maria on 08-11-19
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The Library of Borrowed Hearts
- By: Lucy Gilmore
- Narrated by: Leanne Woodward, Aven Shore, Joe Jameson, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Librarian Chloe Sampson has been struggling: to take care of her three younger siblings, to find herself, to make ends meet. She’s just about at the end of her rope when she stumbles across a rare edition of a book from the 1960s at the local flea market. Deciding it’s a sign of her luck turning, she takes it home with her—only to be shocked when her cranky hermit of a neighbor swoops in and offers to buy it for an exorbitant price. Intrigued, Chloe takes a closer look at the book only to find notes scribbled in the margins between two young lovers back when the book was new.
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Loved this wonderful story
- By Sonoma gal on 03-15-25
By: Lucy Gilmore
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The Book Swap
- By: Tessa Bickers
- Narrated by: Cameron Krogh Stone, Fran Burgoyne
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Still reeling from a recent tragedy, Erin Connolly knows she needs to start living, but has no idea how. When she accidentally donates her favorite book—a heavily annotated copy of To Kill a Mockingbird containing a memento she can’t be without—to a local Little Free Library, she’s devastated. But then the book turns up a week later, back in the library with fresh notes in the margins, along with an invitation in a copy of Great Expectations to meet her newfound pen pal.
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It's ok if you have extra credits.
- By Christina on 12-21-24
By: Tessa Bickers
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The Foundling
- A Novel
- By: Ann Leary
- Narrated by: Laura Benanti
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s 1927, and 18-year-old Mary Engle is hired to work as a secretary at a remote but scenic institution for mentally disabled women called the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age. Soon after she’s hired, Mary learns that a girl from her childhood orphanage is one of the inmates. Mary remembers Lillian as a beautiful free spirit with a sometimes-tempestuous side. Could she be mentally disabled? When Lillian begs Mary to help her escape, Mary is faced with a terrible choice.
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Interesting subject, but poor execution
- By PhotoSports on 08-16-22
By: Ann Leary
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The Moonlight Market
- A Novel
- By: Joanne Harris
- Narrated by: Joanne Harris
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Deep in the heart of London, a photographer walks the streets and captures whatever catches his eye: an old man drinking coffee; a beautiful woman sipping champagne in St. Pancras station; a cloud of moths, disturbed, taking flight across the sky. But with each photo, he captures something unseen by the eye, and as each negative develops—revealing a person he hadn’t met, a danger he hadn’t noticed, and a world he hadn’t seen—he is drawn further into a hidden war.
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The beautiful language being read by the author
- By Rachel Wobschall on 09-17-24
By: Joanne Harris
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The Book of Last Letters
- By: Kerry Barrett
- Narrated by: Harrie Dobby, Josephine Arden
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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London, 1940. When nurse Elsie offers to send a reassuring letter to the family of a patient, she has an idea. She begins a book of last letters: messages to be sent on to wounded soldiers’ loved ones should the very worst come to pass so that no one is left without a final goodbye. London, present day. Stephanie has a lot of people she’d like to speak to: her estranged brother, to whom her last words were in anger; her nan, whose dementia means she is only occasionally lucid enough to talk.
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A historical fiction goodie
- By Patricia Coates on 04-12-22
By: Kerry Barrett
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The Braid
- A Novel
- By: Laetitia Colombani
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In this unforgettable international best seller, three women from very different circumstances around the world find their lives intertwined by a single object and discover what connects us - across cultures, across backgrounds, and across borders.
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Not bad not great.
- By miami1977 on 04-11-25
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When Mountains Move
- By: Julie Cantrell
- Narrated by: Amy Rubinate
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Millie’s mind is racing and there seems to be no clear line between right and wrong. Either path leads to pain, and she’ll do anything to protect the ones she loves. So she decides to bury the truth and begin again, helping Bump launch a ranch in the wilds of Colorado. But just when she thinks she’s left her old Mississippi life behind, the facts surface in the most challenging way.
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sequel - into the free
- By Angie on 12-07-21
By: Julie Cantrell
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The Forgotten Sister
- By: Nicola Cornick
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of the spellbinding historical novels of Philippa Gregory and Kate Morton comes a stunning story based on a real-life Tudor mystery, of a curse that echoes through the centuries and shapes two women’s destinies....1560: Amy Robsart is trapped in a loveless marriage to Robert Dudley, a member of the court of Queen Elizabeth I. Surrounded by enemies and with nowhere left to turn, Amy hatches a desperate scheme to escape - one with devastating consequences that will echo through the centuries.
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LOVE LOVE LOVE
- By Julie Ann on 11-16-20
By: Nicola Cornick
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The Traveler Series
- A Post-Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure: Books 1-3
- By: Tom Abrahams
- Narrated by: Kevin Pierce
- Length: 21 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Five years after a pneumonic plague killed two-thirds of the world’s population, army veteran Marcus Battle is isolated. He’s alone with his guns, his food, and the graves of his wife and child. If anyone steps onto his property he shoots first and never ask questions. But when a woman in distress, chased by marauders, seeks asylum, Marcus has a decision to make.
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Could not finish the first book in the series
- By A Renee Mathews on 08-03-19
By: Tom Abrahams
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Bright Objects
- By: Ruby Todd
- Narrated by: Casey Withoos
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Sylvia Knight is losing hope that the person who killed her husband will ever face justice. Since the night of the hit-and-run, her world has been shrouded in hazy darkness—until she meets Theo St. John, the discoverer of a rare comet soon to be visible to the naked eye. As the comet begins to brighten, Sylvia wonders what the apparition might signify. She is soon drawn into the orbit of local mystic Joseph Evans, who believes the comet’s arrival is nothing short of a divine message.
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what an incredible read
- By Ben Johnson on 09-26-24
By: Ruby Todd
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All the Lives We Never Lived
- By: Anuradha Roy
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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From the Man Booker Prize-nominated author of Sleeping on Jupiter, The Folded Earth, and An Atlas of Impossible Longing, a poignant and sweeping novel set in India during World War II and the present day about a son’s quest to uncover the truth about his mother....
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Beautiful book
- By Sonia S. on 12-13-19
By: Anuradha Roy
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The Yield
- A Novel
- By: Tara June Winch
- Narrated by: Tony Briggs
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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A young Australian woman searches for her grandfather's dictionary, the key to halting a mining company from destroying her family's home and ancestral land in this exquisitely written, heartbreaking, yet hopeful novel of culture, language, tradition, suffering, and empowerment in the tradition of Louise Erdrich, Sandra Cisneros, and Amy Harmon.
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got tired of waiting for the story
- By Catherine E. Shearer on 07-11-20
By: Tara June Winch
The lovely writing is wasted on a plot that could be unique and interesting, but goes all over the place and gets quite boring. Still trying to figure out what the message is.
This book needs some serious editing
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Jane gets herself in a family way when she’s a Senior in high school. She marries the father, of course, as that’s what all good girls do. Her husband Patrick is her opposite. He is not kind; he’s cruel. And what Jane endures in her marriage does seem realistic to me (Yes, I’m jaded…I see the bad characters as true and not the purely good characters). Jane has a daughter, Lauren. Two years later she has a son, and one year after that she has another son. Thus, she has three children before she’s 25. Balancing her husband’s temper and the infants and toddlers are a lot.
This is the backdrop though. The story gains legs when Jane sees a Barbara Walter’s special about the Romanian children who were stuck and ill treated in Orphanages. Jane is so moved by the images that she is motivated to adopt one of those needy children. This “fourth” child is Mirela, and she is a handful. Jane thinks of the blessed virgin mother, Mary, often, and she divines what Mary would do in all the difficult situations.
Lauren is exasperated by her mother and by her destructive new sibling. Lauren’s chapters ring true of a girl who is coming-of-age with a fervent catholic mother. I ached for Lauren as much as I was perplexed by Jane. Adding to Lauren’s adolescent drama is the fact that her mother is a right-to-life activists who frequently protests pro-choice activists. And Lauren’s neighbor is a doctor who performs abortions. This doctor has a son who is in Lauren’s school and is incredibly kind to Lauren.
As her children grow up, Jane does not inflict her believes nor religion on her children or friends/neighbors. Her devotion is her own. She’s not trying to persuade people to be more religious; she only wants to stop abortions and live a saintly life. Again, I have never met such a person (with the pure goal of compassion, empathy, and forgiveness), as generally their dogma clouds their “saintly” behavior, but, Winter writes her that way.
Winter writes teen Lauren perfectly. Poor Lauren. She is left to navigate her teen years alone because Jane is overwhelmed by Mirela. In Lauren’s chapters, the reader will be right back into the uncomfortable time of high school.
Of course, as the title implies, the story is truly about what the addition of Mirela does to the family. It’s difficult to like Mirela, even understanding the conditions from which she came.
Winter does not pontificate nor steer the reader to her own views, other than there are kind and saintly people out there. She shows the complications that arise when one has good intentions and is focused on doing the right thing while blindly missing important issues. Plus, she shows how one child can dominate a family life.
I listened to the audio, performed by Cassandra Campbell who is a favorite of mine. Campbell’s melodic voice adds to the story. I highly recommend the audio.
coming of age in the 1980's
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Just OK - Considered Bailing
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Good story and narrator
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