Vinegar Hill - by A Manette Ansay (Paperback)

About the Book

"P.S. insights, interviews & more"-(p.[1]-18)

From the Back Cover

In a stark, troubling, yet ultimately triumphant celebration of self-determination, award-winning author A. Manette Ansay re-creates a stifling world of guilty and pain, and the tormented souls who inhabit it. It is 1972 when circumstance carries Ellen Grier and her family back to Holly's Field, Wisconsin. Dutifully accompanying her newly unemployed husband, Ellen has brought her two children into the home of her in-laws on Vinegar Hill -- a loveless house suffused with the settling dust of bitterness and routine -- where calculated cruelty is a way of life preserved and perpetuated in the service of a rigid, exacting and angry God. Behind a facade of false piety, there are sins and secrets in this place that could crush a vibrant young woman's passionate spirit. And here Ellen must find the straight to endure, change, and grow in the all-pervading darkness that threatens to destroy everything she is and everyone she loves.

Review Quotes

"A remarkably well-told tale...that not only rivets our attention but floods our veins with the icy chill of recognition and understanding...Vinegar Hill is a powerful story of a haunting, not by the dead but by the living. It is a haunting you won't soon forget." - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"Ansay transcends both feminist epic and Midwestern gothic to achieve, finally, the lunar world of tragedy. This world is lit by the measured beauty of her prose, and the book's final line is worth the pain it takes to get there." - The New Yorker
"Sweet, tender, and chilling." - Washington Post Book World
"One of the best books of the year." - Chicago Tribune
"A finely crafted novel... The characters are undeniably authentic, familiar, and often disturbing specimens of Midwestern small-town life, meticulously preserved in this intriguing literary bell jar... With Vinegar Hill, Ansay joins a list of writers... who are transforming Midwestern fiction into a new national literature." - Chicago Tribune
"Magical... A satisfying journey to freedom... Ansay writes in a lovely voice." - Vogue