The author uses the famous 1900 hurricane that hit Galveston Island, the deadliest in U. S. history, to anchor her historical tale.
The protagonist is Catherine Wainwright; she is a talented pianist from Dayton, Ohio, whose livelihood dries up in the midst of a romantic scandal. She begins a correspondence with Oscar Williams a Galveston farmer. Oscar is a widowed with a young son.
They get married and Catherine moves to Galveston. She has to learn about housekeeping and to nurture a grief stricken young boy. She clashes with Nan the friend of the first wife. The story has the usual tales of city girl living on a rustic dairy farm on an island.
The book is well written and Weisgarber’s descriptions are fantastic. She brings 1900 Galveston to life. The characters are finely drawn, anchored by a historical event to make a great read. Weisgarber is a talented story teller. This is my first book by this author. I bought it because I had read she won the Orange Award for her prior book. I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. Coleen Marlo narrated the book.
The Promise The deadliest hurricane in U.S. history made landfall on Galveston Island, Texas and the surrounding area in 1900. It destroyed the island and killed thousands of people. The author cleverly uses this horrific storm as the background for the story of Catherine and Oscar.
Catherine lives in Dayton Ohio and is an accomplished pianist who’s only source of income is from her students. When the community hears of her romantic scandal with a married man the parents take their children out of her school which takes away her livelihood. In desperation, she writes to a previous admirer, Oscar, who has moved to Galveston to become a farmer. Oscar’s wife has recently died and he needs a wife and a mother for his young son. When Oscar proposes to her she is grateful for the chance to get away from Ohio. She accepts his offer and takes a train south. Little does she know she will walk into a completely different culture where she doesn’t fit in. The heat, flies and a standoffish housekeeper nearly drive her mad. She starts to adjust to the environment and the threat of bad weather approaches as Oscar and Catherine begin to fall in love.
The story was told in alternating voices between Catherine and Nan, the housekeeper. As I was drawn into the story I was immediately engaged with the compelling characters. Their story is simple but rich with emotion. My heart went out to every one of the characters and their plight in life. This is a rare time that I think a book should be longer rather than shorter so that the author would have been able to strengthen the relationship of Catherine and Oscar. I for one would like to see this novel made into a movie! The Promise This book would not leave me alone until I finished it. Catherine, Oscar, Nan and Andre were all fully developed characters who each wiggled his way into my heart. Catherine, a renowned pianist from Dayton OH found herself ostracized for a liaison with a married man. With nowhere to turn, she reconnects with Oscar, an old admirer, the man who once delivered coal to her family. She joins Oscar and his son Andre in Galveston Island, TX out of desperation, learning a lot about herself in the process. It is Oscar's patience and quiet gestures of love that allow Catherine to gradually shed her shell.
Andre's mother Bernadette, whose funeral is described as the book opens, is an important character regardless. Nan Ogden, an outspoken, attentive housekeeper, has a lot going on below the surface. One of my favorite scenes is when she picks up her violin and fiddles her heart out. Music is a bridge between personalities and histories throughout the book.
Put these wonderful characters against the backdrop the worst natural disaster of the century, and you have some mighty fine historical fiction. I raced to get to the end of the book to see how my friends would fare.
Yet it was not the plot that made me give this book 5 stars. It was definitely the art of the storytelling. There was not one misstep. Each word was carefully chosen to add its piece to the whole. There were no extraneous tangents, just a gentle, sure-footed unfolding of story. I could feel the sweltering heat, the isolation of the landscape, and the tenacity required just to live. There were no overworked descriptions; just a comfortable cadence that pulled this reader right along.
Nan said at one point, Don't want to talk about it.
Catherine replied, And so we won't. Some things, I understood, could not bear the weight of words.
How beautiful is that?
The Promise I liked this book, but I thought it was very slow. I thought it would be interesting to read about the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, and I liked the story that went with it, but I could have put it down at any point, and never picked it back up. It wasn't until the last 50 pages, that the book got good. I am giving it 3 1/2 stars only because of the page turning ending, otherwise I would give it a 3. The Promise I loved The Personal History of Rachel DuPree and so, was thrilled to get my hands on Ms.Weisgarber's next novel. The writing is, in my opinion, just as flawless, just as tantalizing, in that I was drawn in by the story and the women telling their stories, almost immediately, and could not put it down. A beautiful story about love, and redemption, but...sad, sad, sad. The ending left me disappointed. I found myself imagining how I could of made it end better. But it is nonetheless, a riveting story told in the first person by two women. Women, who at first you don't care much for, but then find yourself rooting for. And of course the handsome, kind, smart, widower Oscar who they both fall in love with, adds to the story. All set in the span of one week in hot, buggy, Texas at the turn of the century with the worst hurricane of the century abrewin'. My 3 star reflects the ending choice only. Overall writing talent and story plot would be a 5-starer. The Promise
3.5 What first attracted me to this novel was the setting, I just love Galveston, Texas. Throw in the hurricane that devastated the city and I just had to read this.
Catherine and Oscar come together in a very unusual way, one fleeing from a scandal and the other, a childhood admirer, whose firs wife had died leaving his 4 year old son, motherless.
What follows is a warm and inviting story as Catherine attempts to get used to a way of life she is not at all used to and Oscar tries to put together a new family. Nan, the woman who cooks and cleans for Oscar and had hopes that he would marry her, is not very welcoming.
The prose if very formal, which is fitting for the time period, the late 1800's and 1900, but did take some time for me to get used to. The reserve at times distanced me from the characters. As the hurricane descends on the island, the tension in the story rises.
A good read, loved the island details and a look into a different way of life. At times this story seemed rushed to me, and I wish the ending had been different, but that is my inner critic rearing its ugly head. The Promise Ann Weisgarber's debut novel The Personal History of Rachel Dupree was shortlisted for the Orange Award for New Writers and longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2009. Her second novel The Promise looks like it will attract similar plaudits.
Set in the US in 1900, we are told the story of young pianist Catherine Wainright who is left in desperate circumstances following an inappropriate liaison with a married man. Shunned by the proper folk of Dayton, Ohio she grasps at straws in an effort not to be totally ruined. By reigniting a friendship with a former admirer she manages to rescue her reputation but this requires her moving a thousand miles away to Galveston Island, Texas. Her rescuer, recently widowed dairy farmer Oscar Williams is a quiet, reserved man but he does his utmost to help Catherine settle in.
This is a compelling read peopled with characters who will engage the reader. Catherine sticks out like a sore thumb with her townish ways but you feel for her as she struggles to adjust to reduced circumstances, a stifling climate and a grieving step-son, Andre. Whilst Oscar's housekeeper, Nan Ogden, does not overtly reject the new Mrs Williams she feels unable to give a wholly warm welcome to the newcomer.
I loved the vivid descriptions of the island and you get a very strong sense of the isolation of the islanders, always at the mercy of the elements, both the sweltering sun and the unpredictable waters. Equally prevalent in the story is the theme of music and how it affects people's emotions, creating a spark between Catherine and Oscar, building bridges between Catherine and Andre and, in Nan's case, resurrecting feelings she'd prefer to keep buried.
A powerful, moving story which is sure to garner even more fans for this talented author. The Promise A powerful, touching, wise and beautifully executed book! There is so much below the surface of this story of two women's love for the same man set against the devastating Galveston hurricane of 1900. This book is about forgiveness--of self, of others, of fate--and its redemptive power. Ann Weisgarber is a masterful writer who plumbs the truths of the human condition while enthralling readers with a tension-filled tale of characters caught in circumstances beyond their control. Her books offer a hope-filled vision of humanity that is missing from so many modern works. I loved THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF RACHEL DUPREE, but THE PROMISE simply blew me away. If you read one book this year, make it this one.
The Promise Ann Weisgarber excels at depicting the inner lives of people living through difficult historical times. She writes with a graceful simplicity that lays bare the natural beauty of the landscape and her characters' turbulent emotions. I found The Promise to be an even more engrossing read than her first novel, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree.
In Dayton, Ohio, in 1900, 29-year-old Catherine Wainwright re-establishes a correspondence with an old friend, Oscar Williams, after her affair with her cousin's husband comes to light and brings shame upon her and her family. Oscar had used to deliver coal as a boy, but now he's a prosperous dairy farmer on Galveston Island down in Texas, a recent widower with a 5-year-old son, Andre.
Catherine, a talented pianist from a wealthy family, had never considered him as a suitor before, but now, she relates, he was the only person whose letter was not cold or indifferent. When he offers marriage, which she both hoped for and was resigned to, she boards a southbound train in desperation, leaving her creditors behind.
The Promise smoothly alternates between the perspectives of Catherine, forced to adjust to more rustic circumstances and to marriage and a stepchild, and Nan Ogden, the younger woman who works as Oscar's housekeeper, having promised his late wife, her friend Bernadette, to take care of Andre. Nan secretly loves Oscar and is devastated he chose someone so different from her as his bride.
Through the women's narratives, the novel movingly depicts the loneliness of an outsider. Both are vulnerable in different ways. Not knowing how to cook, and unused to her new home's isolation and steamy climate, Catherine must depend on Nan to take care of her household. And Nan, despite her strong-willed nature, must stand by and say nothing as Catherine grows close to both Oscar and Andre. Both their voices feel authentic, Catherine's formality and perfect diction contrasting with Nan's easy knowledge of island life and her south Texas drawl.
A third woman plays a major role in the story, too. Bernadette only appears in flashbacks, but her presence comes alive on the page nonetheless. Ann Weisgarber creates such a compelling back story for her, a Louisiana Cajun who overcame a shameful background and enjoyed a loving marriage only to die young, that it makes you realize both how unfair and how precious life is.
The Williams home is built on a ridge, and on 8-foot stilts besides, but it, too, like everything else on Galveston Island, becomes vulnerable as a mammoth storm appears off the coast. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 was America's most devastating natural disaster, with terrible loss of life and property. While I turned the pages rapidly, anxious to see how things turned out, I had to put the book down several times, fearful that characters I'd come to care about might be hurt.
Rich in description and emotion, The Promise is highly recommended for admirers of character-centered historical novels. It was a deserving finalist for the 2014 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. The Promise 4.5 stars!
My 1st book by this author. I have her other novel, The Personal History Of Rachel DuPree, & look forward to reading it soon.
My friend, Trudy and I did a buddy read on this, & we both loved the story. It is about a young woman who is scorned by her community for an affair she had with a married man. Back in 1900, being married before the old age of 30 was crucial. She leaves Ohio to reunite with her childhood friend, Oscar, who is recently widowed with a young son. Catherine is a city girl, completely unaware of how to raise a child & tend a home in the country. Oscar has a housekeeper named Nan who loves his little boy, Andre, and struggles watching the sparks between Oscar & Catherine.
The hurricane of Sept. 1900 is an actual event, and this horrific storm took the lives of many.
I highly recommend this wonderful book!
Thank you to Trudy, who recommended it, and read it with me!! The Promise
1900. Young pianist Catherine Wainwright flees the fashionable town of Dayton, Ohio in the wake of a terrible scandal. Heartbroken and facing destitution, she finds herself striking up correspondence with a childhood admirer, the recently widowed Oscar Williams. In desperation she agrees to marry him.
But when Catherine travels to Oscar's farm on Galveston Island, Texas – a thousand miles from home – she finds she is little prepared for the life that awaits her. The island is remote, the weather sweltering, and Oscar's little boy Andre is grieving hard for his lost mother. And though Oscar tries to please his new wife, the secrets of the past sit uncomfortably between them.
Meanwhile for Nan Ogden, Oscar's housekeeper, Catherine's sudden arrival has come as a great shock. For not only did she promise Oscar's first wife that she would be the one to take care of little Andre, but she has feelings for Oscar which she is struggling to suppress. And when the worst storm in a generation descends, the women will find themselves tested as never before...
From the author of The Personal History of Rachel Dupree, shortlisted for the Orange Award for New Writers and longlisted for the Orange Prize, The Promise is a heart-breaking story of love, loss and buried secrets, which confirms Weisgarber as one of the most compelling literary voices writing today. The Promise