An instant
New York Times Bestseller
A Read with
Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!
"A
thrilling debut that deserves your attention." – Ron Charles, the
Washington Post
Written with
the haunting emotional power of Elizabeth Strout and Barbara Kingsolver, an
astonishing debut novel that explores the lingering effects of a brutal crime
on the women of one small Texas oil town in the 1970s.
Mercy is
hard in a place like this . . .
It’s
February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil
boom. While the town’s men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately
know and fear the violence that always seems to follow.
In the early
hours of the morning after Valentine’s Day, fourteen-year-old Gloria Ramírez
appears on the front porch of Mary Rose Whitehead’s ranch house, broken and
barely alive. The teenager had been viciously attacked in a nearby oil field—an
act of brutality that is tried in the churches and barrooms of Odessa before it
can reach a court of law. When justice is evasive, the stage is set for a
showdown with potentially devastating consequences.
Valentine is
a haunting exploration of the intersections of violence and race, class and region
in a story that plumbs the depths of darkness and fear, yet offers a window
into beauty and hope. Told through the alternating points of view of indelible
characters who burrow deep in the reader’s heart, this fierce, unflinching, and
surprisingly tender novel illuminates women’s strength and vulnerability, and
reminds us that it is the stories we tell ourselves that keep us alive.