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The Center of Winter: A Novel Kindle Edition
At the center of winter, in Motley, Minnesota, Arnold Schiller gives in to the oppressive season that reigns outside and also to his own inner demons -- he commits suicide, leaving a devastated family in his wake.
Claire Schiller, wife and mother, takes shelter from the emotional storm with her husband's parents but must ultimately emerge from her grief and help her two young children to recover. Esau, her oldest, is haunted by the same darkness that plagued his father. At twelve years old, he has already been in and out of state psychiatric hospitals, and now, with the help of his mother and sister, he must overcome the forces that drive him deep into himself. But as the youngest, perhaps it is Katie who carries the heaviest burden. A precocious six-year-old who desperately wants to help her mother hold the family together, she will have to come to terms with the memory of her father, who was at once loving and cruel.
Narrated alternately by Claire, Katie, and Esau, this powerful and passionate novel explores the ways in which both children and adults experience tragic events, discover solace and hope in one another, and survive. The Center of Winter finds humor in unlikely places and evokes the north -- its people and landscape -- with warmth, sensitivity, and insight. The story of three people who, against all odds, find their way out of the center of winter, Marya Hornbacher's debut novel will leave you breathless, tearful, and ultimately inspired.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarperCollins e-books
- Publication dateOctober 13, 2009
- File size1351 KB
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About the Author
Marya Hornbacher is an award-winning journalist and bestselling writer. Her books include the memoirs Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, which has been published in twelve languages, and the New York Times bestseller Madness: A Bipolar Life; the recovery books Sane: Mental Illness, Addiction, and the Twelve Steps, and Waiting: A Nonbeliever's Higher Power; and the novel The Center of Winter. She teaches in the graduate creative writing program at Northwestern University and lives in Chicago.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Center of Winter
A NovelBy Marya HornbacherHarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2005 Marya HornbacherAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0060929685
Chapter OneKate
It begins with a small town, far north.
Motley, Minnesota, Pop. 442. Near the headwaters of the muddy Mississippi, past the blue glass of the cities and the stained red brick of the warehouse districts, past the long-abandoned train stations and the Grain Belt sign and the Pillsbury Flour building on the riverbanks, past the smokestacks and hulking wrecks of the industrial section, the town lies past all this, in the center of the prairie that creeps north and west of the river, into the Dakotas.
Seen from above, this prairie, its yellow grasses, is dotted sparsely with towns too small for mapmakers' concern.
Just south of Staples, on the county road that runs through the center of town, passing the school at the south edge, Norby's Department Store, Morey's Fish Co., the market with the scarred front porch, the old brick storefronts with small wooden signs on hinges, the painted names of businesses faded and flaked. Morrison's Meats, the Cardinal Cafe. By the time you've noticed that you're passing through, County Road 10 swerves sharply to the left, past Y-Knot Liquors, and all semblance of town disappears, leaving you to wonder if there was a town after all. All you see are acres and acres of field.
On the corner of Madison Street is a pale eggshell-blue house with three steps leading up from the walk and a postage stamp of yard in the back where my mother, when the spirit moved her, gardened feverishly and then let the garden go sprawling untended in the tropical wet of July.
My father would sit on the back porch watching her, sitting the way men here sit: leaned back, feet planted far apart, arms on the arms of the chair, a beer in his right hand. The beer would be sweating.
They met in New York, at a club. They met and got married at city hall, and when I had my mother alone, I demanded she tell me again about the dress she made from curtains, and the red shoes, and the garnet necklace she got for a song. They had a party with cheap wine back at the apartment. I picture it all in rich colors. I remember the club for them, with red walls and small, spattered candles on the tables. Whether it had these things or not is of no concern to me, because it's my story, not theirs.
The garnet necklace is mine now. I keep thinking I ought to get the clasp repaired.
"What were you wearing?"
My mother was soaping my head.
"Sweetheart, I don't remember. Dunk," she said. I dunked and spluttered.
"You have to remember," I insisted. She laughed. "All right," she said, and I could tell she was going to make it up, and I didn't care. "Black. A black coat. And a hat."
"What kind of hat?"
"Katie, for heaven's -- hold still -- what? A hat with a feather." She scrubbed my ears. In the hall my father was yelling for her, and the door opened. She turned to look at him.
"There you are!" he said. "When's dinner?"
"I'm bathing Katie."
"I can see that."
"When I'm done."
He stood there. "Esau's sulking," he said.
My mother turned back to me and started scrubbing my neck ferociously. "What am I supposed to do about it?"
"Hi, Daddy," I said.
"Hiya, kiddo," he said. "I see your mother's in one of her moods again."
I nodded. My mother rolled her eyes.
"Well, all I can say," my father said, and then paused as if thinking.
"Yep," he noted with finality, and closed the door.
In the summer I wore a white nightgown and the sun didn't quite set, the sky turning a faint purple that lingered late. We ate dinner out on the back porch. My father was watching the sky.
"We ought to go down to the city," he said.
My mother snorted.
"What, we shouldn't go down to the city?" my father asked. "You don't want to go down to the city? There was something wrong with the suggestion?"
I sucked on my tomato wedge. My mother said nothing.
"Claire?" my father said. "Answer me. Do you or do you not want to go down to the city?"
"Mom, just answer him," Esau muttered.
We waited.
"Yes," my mother said carefully, "I would love to go down to the city."
My father grinned. "Good!" he said. "We'll have dinner. See a show." He looked around the garden, pleased, and took a swallow of his drink. He leaned over and kissed my mother on the cheek. "Good," he said again.
My mother smiled faintly at her plate.
We would never go down to the city.
The light was fading, the way light fades in a memory, objects losing their definition, faces falling into shadow. My mother was clearing the table and telling me to get ready for bed.
And the house settled into obscurity for the night. My father watched night fall over his small square of the world while his wife did the dishes and his children did whatever it is that children do before bed.
What was he thinking about?
Perhaps my mother startled slightly when he came up behind her at the sink and placed his hand on her arm.
Perhaps she relaxed, and turned her face a little toward him.
Perhaps they danced then in the living room, to old records, while I stood in my white nightgown and watched through my crackedopen door.
I went to bed to the muffled sound of Count Basie, and the hot night, and imagined my brother on the other side of the bedroom wall.
It was 1969. America had gone all to hell, but that was far away.
Nothing could happen to us because it was June and my brother was sleeping and my mother was the most beautiful woman in the world. Soon my father would dip her, kiss her, go to the bar for another drink.
Continues...
Excerpted from The Center of Winterby Marya Hornbacher Copyright © 2005 by Marya Hornbacher. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- ASIN : B000FCJYE6
- Publisher : HarperCollins e-books; Reprint edition (October 13, 2009)
- Publication date : October 13, 2009
- Language : English
- File size : 1351 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 352 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 0060192267
- Best Sellers Rank: #776,321 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #6,197 in Contemporary Literary Fiction
- #14,243 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- #20,621 in Contemporary Romance Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Marya Hornbacher is an award-winning journalist and bestselling writer. Her books include the memoirs Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, which has been published in twelve languages, and the New York Times bestseller Madness: A Bipolar Life; the recovery books Sane: Mental Illness, Addiction, and the Twelve Steps, and Waiting: A Nonbeliever's Higher Power; and the novel The Center of Winter. She teaches in the graduate creative writing program at Northwestern University and lives in Chicago.
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If you've not read it, I highly recommend more than about any book I've read in a good bit. You won't regret it.