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Searching... Stillwater Public Library | PB FICTION SPE | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | MN R FICTION SPE | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Elly had been an outsider all her life. Now she was all alone, with two little boys to raise, and a third child on the way. Will arrived in Whitney, Georgia, hoping to leave his lonely past behind. When he saw Elly's classified--WANTED: A HUSBAND--and walked into her life, he knew he had left loneliness behind forever...
Author Notes
LaVyrle Spencer was born in Browerville, Minnesota on July 17, 1943. While working as a teacher's aide at Osseo Junior High School, she started writing her first novel, The Fulfillment, which was published in 1979. She has written more than a dozen novels that have hit the New York Times bestseller list, and many of her works have been condensed for Reader's Digest and Good Housekeeping. She has won five Romance Writers of America RITA Awards for her novels The Endearment, Hummingbird, Twice Loved, The Gamble, and Morning Glory. In 1988, she was inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. Many of her novels have been made into television movies including The Fulfillment, Home Song, and Family Blessings and the major motion picture Morning Glory. She retired from writing in 1997.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Fans of Spencer's bestselling paperback historical novels ( Vows ; The Gamble ) will be pleased by her hardcover debut, again demonstrating her gift for telling a satisfyingly conventional romantic tale in fresh, sprightly prose. Tall, dark and handsome Will Parker has served time for the killing of a Texas prostitute, but keeps losing jobs as his reputation becomes known. In the small town of Whitney, Ga., at the beginning of WW II, he answers the advertisement of a pregnant widow and mother of two, the abused and reclusive Eleanor Dinsmore, who is looking for a husband. Soon in love with ostensibly plain, bedraggled Ellie, Parker dotes on her two boys, and works to support the family. Fittingly for this sort of bucolic idyll, Will and Ellie, despite their rudimentary educations, love books and develop a special friendship with wise old Miss Beasley, the local librarian. Alas, brazen and rapacious Lula Peak, the town floozie, sets her sights on Will, waylaying him in the library; meantimes, Lula is blackmailing her lover, the cowardly Harley Overmire, who is no friend of Will. The clearly drawn characters fulfill their imperativesincluding Will, who becomes a war heroand all is neatly and pleasingly resolved. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
He was a vagrant ex-con; she poor, pregnant and unpretty. Who was the bigger loser?"" There you have the gist of this debut hard-cover romance by the author of such paperback heart palpitators as The Gamble and The Hellion. How do these made-for-each-other losers meet? Simple. The author has her hero, Will Parket, recently released from the pen after serving a sentence for killing a floozy in Texas, answer an ad while passing through the backwater town of Whitney, Georgia. It seems that crazy Elly Dinsmore, five months pregnant, mother of two, and a new widow, needs a man around her place. The pair get along fine right from the start, too--with Will soon proving he has a soft spot in his heart for Elly's kids, making friends with the town librarian, Miss Beasley, while reading up on beekeeping and childbirth, and fending off the advances of the town's fastest lady, Lula Peak. Finally, Elly and Will tie the knot, with a dime-store ring and visit to the movie house to celebrate; the baby comes; and Will marches off to fight with the Marines at Guadalcanal. When he comes home, with a limp and a Purple Heart, he finds Elly far less reclusive than before, and his happy family intact--which would have made a nice finis were it not for the fact that Lulu Peak gets murdered and Will arrested, leaving Elly to fight to clear her jailbird's good name. Spencer's tone is as sweet and cheerful as a robin's egg, and, certainly, there's chemistry between her main characters. So this will please romance readers, especially those who believe that ex-cons and poor, rural housewives have such sterling souls. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
