Velva Jean Learns to Drive
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Jenna Lamia
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By:
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Jennifer Niven
About this listen
Velva Jean dreams of becoming a big-time singer in Nashville until she falls in love with Harley Bright, a handsome juvenile delinquent turned revival preacher. As their tumultuous love story unfolds, Velva Jean must choose between keeping her hard-won home and pursuing her dream of singing in the Grand Ole Opry.
©2009 Jenniver Niven (P)2009 PenguinListeners also enjoyed...
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It is 1936 and Kate Merritt works hard to keep her family together. Her father has slipped into alcoholism, her mother is trying to come to grips with their dire financial situation, and her sisters seem to remain blissfully oblivious to all of it. Kate could never have imagined that a dirty, abandoned little girl named Lorena Birdsong would be just what her family needs.
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Beautiful angel story
- By Kindle Customer on 02-24-24
By: Ann H. Gabhart
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Rapture of Canaan
- By: Sheri Reynolds
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Novelist Sheri Reynolds weaves lyrical prose and folksy dialogue into her spellbinding tales. The Rapture of Canaan, a New York Times best-seller, is the moving story of a teenaged girl clashing with her harshly controlled world. Growing up in a closed religious community deep in the rural South, 15-year-old Ninah Huff painstakingly and obediently follows her church’s many rules—she knows that public humiliation follows the smallest transgression
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Really good story
- By mctoria on 08-15-24
By: Sheri Reynolds
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The Plague of Doves
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James, Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
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Avoid this Plague
- By Andre on 05-16-08
By: Louise Erdrich
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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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The Hollow Ground
- By: Natalie S. Harnett
- Narrated by: Luci Christian
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The underground mine fires ravaging Pennsylvania coal country have forced 11-year-old Brigid Howley and her family to seek refuge with her estranged grandparents, the formidable Gram and the black lung-stricken Gramp. Tragedy is no stranger to the Howleys, a proud Irish-American clan who takes strange pleasure in the "curse" laid upon them generations earlier by a priest who ran afoul of the Molly Maguires. The weight of this legacy rests heavily on a new generation, when Brigid, already struggling to keep her family together, makes a grisly discovery in a long-abandoned bootleg mine shaft.
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Disfunction makes a good read
- By NHull on 05-30-14
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The Twelve-Mile Straight
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- By: Eleanor Henderson
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 17 hrs and 4 mins
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Cotton County, Georgia, 1930: In a house full of secrets, two babies - one light-skinned, the other dark - are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper's daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged behind a truck down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town. In the aftermath, the farm's inhabitants are forced to contend with their complicity in a series of events that left a man dead and a family irrevocably fractured.
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Great read!
- By S. Clay on 11-01-17
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Mudbound
- By: Hillary Jordan
- Narrated by: Ezra Knight, Kate Forbes, Joseph Collins, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Hillary Jordan's mesmerizing debut novel won the Bellwether Prize for fiction. A powerful piece of Southern literature, Mudbound takes on prejudice in its myriad forms on a Mississippi Delta farm in 1946. City girl Laura McAllen attempts to raise her family despite questionable decisions made by her husband. Tensions continue to rise when her brother-in-law and the son of a family of sharecroppers both return from WWII as changed men bearing the scars of combat.
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May this South never rise again.
- By Betty on 03-25-12
By: Hillary Jordan
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Mrs. Mike
- By: Benedict Freedman, Nancy Freedman
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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A moving love story set in the Canadian wilderness, Mrs. Mike is a classic tale that has enchanted millions of readers worldwide. It brings the fierce, stunning landscape of Canada to life and tenderly evokes the love that blossoms between Sergeant Mike Flannigan and beautiful young Katherine Mary O'Fallon.
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How could I have missed this all these years?
- By Dale C. Farran on 01-30-10
By: Benedict Freedman, and others
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This Side of the Sky
- By: Elyse Singleton
- Narrated by: Myra Taylor, Sharon Washington, Richard Ferrone
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning journalist Elyse Singleton delivers what Essence calls “a gem - the perfect book to curl up with.”
Best friends Lilian and Myraleen, two African American women from rural Mississippi, travel to Europe during World War II to act as members of the Women’s Army Corps. During this time of segregation and destruction, both women discover love and heartbreak, triumph and defeat.
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A Breath of Fresh Air
- By Adina Andreu on 07-19-12
By: Elyse Singleton
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The Sound and the Fury
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
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Hang in
- By W.Denis on 07-11-05
By: William Faulkner
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Angel of Harlem
- By: Kuwanna Haulsey
- Narrated by: Brenda Pressley
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Inspired by the extraordinary events of Dr. May Chinn’s life, Angel of Harlem is a deeply affecting story of love and transcendence. Weaving seamlessly scenes from the battlefields of the Civil War, during which her father escaped from slavery, to the Harlem living rooms and kitchen tables where May is sometimes forced to operate on her patients, this fascinating novel lays bare the heart of a woman who changed the face of medicine.
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Really Enjoyed!
- By Amazon Customer on 08-08-19
By: Kuwanna Haulsey
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Midnight at the Electric
- By: Jodi Lynn Anderson
- Narrated by: Jorjeana Marie, Bailey Carr, Fiona Hardingham
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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2065: Adri has been handpicked to live on Mars. But weeks before launch, she discovers the journal of a girl who lived in her house more than a hundred years ago and is immediately drawn into the mystery surrounding her fate. 1934: Amid the fear and uncertainty of the Dust Bowl, Catherine’s family’s situation is growing dire. She must find the courage to sacrifice everything she loves in order to save the one person she loves most.
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Beautiful, Heart-wrenching, and Unbelievably Engaging
- By Brad&Britney on 01-10-18
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a great summer read
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What listeners say about Velva Jean Learns to Drive
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Susan
- 05-28-10
Wonderful book!!!!
I loved this book! I was sad when it had to end. The narrator is the absolute best! I hope the auther writes more books soon, maybe a part II of Velva Jean?
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- geepdude
- 01-08-10
Lovely book
This book is a wonderful read. It is a simple story of a girl and her dreams. Highly recommended.
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2 people found this helpful
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- KBS
- 04-26-18
Narrator Makes This Book Come Alive
Velva Jean becomes a real person thanks to Jenna Lamia....she’ll make the reader laugh/cry/smile with all her antics. Living in NC... I could definitely relate to the small mountain towns and the folks that lived there.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amy
- 04-15-21
loved this book!
I loved this book sooooo much! The struggle to become the woman she needs to be is so real and tangible, I joined her in learning to drive!
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Overall
- Jbug
- 12-01-09
This should win an Audie Award
I loved this book. Like the prior reviewer, it kept my attention from beginning to end. Jenna Lamia is one of my favorite narrators, and southern literature suits her voice. This book ranks right up there with Secret Life of Bees (also narrated by Lamia) and The Help (Lamia is a narrator here, too.). This is the first fiction book by this author, which can't be her last. She ties all the "little stories" in the book together with a very easy to listen to style. And no, it's not about driving. Highly recommend this one.
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18 people found this helpful
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- Elizabeth
- 11-14-13
Superb narration, good story
Set in rural North Carolina in the 1930s, this is a coming of age and self-discovery story of young Velva Jean. While the story is enjoyable and simple, it raises great questions about life, love, families and marriage...what do you do when someone misunderstands your appropriate and helpful actions? What do you do when someone's actions of love are actually oppressing you? When is it appropriate to be selfless and when is it appropriate to be selfish? Is there room for both?
The audio book is excellent, with a narrator highly skilled at providing appropriate accents and voices. She clearly enhanced the book experience.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Imamomof4
- 07-19-15
Historical Fiction + Jenna Lemia = Enjoyment
Any additional comments?
I'm a sucker for historical fiction - especially stories that deal with actual people and events, not just stories who happen to be set in the past. In fact, it's my favorite way to learn about history. Even though some people are fictional, someone very like them probably did exist and lived similar lives. This story paints a vivid and fresh picture of life in the hills of North Carolina at the time that Skyline Drive was being cut through the tops of the mountains. It reminded me often of the story of Christy by Catherine Marshall, although this was bit more earthy. I truly enjoyed the reading as well (Jenna Lamia is winner!). Ms. Niven did a wonderful job creating believable period characters, yet mixed with a little of the outlandish to spice things up a bit. You'll simultaneously cheer for and shake your head at Velva Jean!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Barrel Racer
- 10-16-12
Would listen again!
Always like to listen to Jenia Lemia, awesome narrator. Velva Jean learns to drive is a down home book. Makes you feel like you are living back in the early 1900s. Life was harder, yet people found a way to entertain themselves and care for their families. They went through many of the same trials and tribulations that we do today. I love to listen to these old stories and how people dealt with their lives, friends, and families. Loved it!!
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- kim
- 04-23-18
I took a trip to Appalachia.
Loved the sweet voice & accent of the reader . Story felt real for me.
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- happywife
- 03-16-15
Wonderful!
Really enjoyed this! Very well done. Story was great, reader did a fabulous job of bringing the tale to life.
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