Tipton - Hardcover

Hilary Holladay

4.07

15 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1908483725 ISBN 13: 9781908483720

Publisher: Knox Robinson Publishing, 2014

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In the years leading up to World War II, life at the Tipton Home is tranquil. The children help run the farm that sustains them and obey Dale and Muriel Jenkins, the couple running this rural Oklahoma orphanage on a tight budget. But the arrival of a sensual and impulsive young housemother interrupts Tipton's gentle rhythms. Alice Williams quickly attracts the admiration of the teenaged boys. Ross Gentry in particular develops feelings for Alice, who nurses him to health after a brutal fight and agrees to help him find out the identity of his birth parents. Defying her Aunt Muriel and Uncle Dale, Alice flirts with Ross and the other boys, meddles in orphanage business, and goes out drinking with Anna Boyer, a fellow housemother who has a crush on her. All the while, Alice longs for her estranged husband. Macklin Williams now lives in Rapidan, Virginia, where his high-handed great uncle has promised to pay for his education so long as he tends the horses at Red Road Farm. While Alice dreams of Macklin, he tries mightily to forget her and retain his place at the family estate he loves. The attack on Pearl Harbor changes everything. Ross forgoes a college scholarship for military service. Alice decides to leave Tipton as well. With Anna's reluctant help, she seeks out Macklin, who stopped communicating with her long ago. Set against the tumultuous backdrop of World War II, Tipton is a sweeping coming-of-age story about love and friendship and unavoidable heartbreak.

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About the Author:

Hilary Holladay was born in Richmond, Virginia, and grew up in Virginia and Pennsylvania. She graduated from the University of Virginia and later earned an MA from the College of William and Mary and a PhD in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her book publications include American Hipster: A Life of Herbert Huncke, The Times Square Hustler Who Inspired the Beat Movement and Wild Blessings: The Poetry of Lucille Clifton. She is also the author of a poetry collection, The Dreams of Mary Rowlandson. An avid tennis player, she teaches American literature at James Madison University and lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Review:

Hilary Holladay's debut novel is an eloquent achievement. Set in rural Oklahoma and Virginia in the late 1930s and continuing into the war years, with much of its action swirling around Alice Williams, the complex heroine of the story, Tipton presents a sepia-toned world of characters whose lives, while initially apart from, are drawn increasingly into the cataclysms of the larger, darker world. Friendship, the search for identity, coming of age, class, the effects of war, and the power of love--all familiar themes--are rendered new by Holladay's imagining, and Tipton leaves us with its own hard-won truths. -- David Daniel, author of

Hilary Holladay has written a big story, alive with the twists and turns of real life in its unpredictability, pain, and delight. -- William McCranor Henderson, author of

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