About this item
Following the death of their mother from a botched backwoods abortion, the McAlister daughters have to cope with the ripple effect of this tragedy as they come of age in 1950s Mississippi and then grow up to face their own impossible choices - an unforgettable, beautiful novel that is threaded throughout with the stories of mothers and daughters in pre-Roe versus Wade America. Life heads down back alleys, takes sharp left turns. Then, one fine day it jumps the track and crashes." In the fall of 1957, Olivia McAlister is living in Opelika, Mississippi, caring for her two girls, June and Grace, and her husband, Holly. She dreams of living a much larger life - seeing the world and returning to her wartime job at a landing boat factory in New Orleans. As she watches over the birds in her yard, Olivia feels like an "accidental" - a migratory bird blown off course. When Olivia becomes pregnant again, she makes a fateful decision, compelling Grace, June, and Holly to cope in different ways. While their father digs up the backyard to build a bomb shelter, desperate to protect his family, Olivias spinster sister tries to take them all under her wing. But the impact of Olivias decision reverberates throughout Graces and Junes lives. Grace, caught up in an unconventional love affair, becomes one of the "girls who went away" to have a baby in secret. June, guilt-ridden for her part in exposing Graces pregnancy, eventually makes an unhappy marriage. Meanwhile Ed Mae Johnson, an African-American care worker in a New Orleans orphanage, is drastically impacted by Graces choices. As the years go by, their lives intersect in ways that reflect the unpredictable nature of bird flight that lands in accidental locations - and the consolations of imperfect return. Filled with tragedy, humor, joy, and the indomitable strength of women facing the constricted spaces of the 1950s and 60s, The Accidentals is a poignant, timely novel that reminds us of the hope and consolation that can be found in unexpected landings.
About the Author
Like the characters in her latest novel, Promise, Minrose Gwin is a native of Tupelo, Mississippi. She grew up hearing wild stories about the devastating Tupelo tornado of 1936--flying babies, dehorned cows, people dangling in bare-limbed trees--all of which would find their way into Promise, a novel that unearths the deeper devastation of racial injustice. Gwin began her writing career as a newspaper and wire service reporter in cities throughout the southeast. Her civil rights-era novel, The Queen of Palmyra, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, a finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Award, and a Women's National Book Association Great Group Reads selection. Her memoir, Wishing for Snow, tells the story of her mother's descent into mental illness.Wearing another hat, Gwin is also a teacher, author of cultural studies books, and editor, focusing on issues of social justice. In Remembering Medgar Evers: Writing the Long Civil Rights Movement, she writes of the reverberating impact of this lesser-known Civil Rights leader's martyrdom. She is also a coeditor of The Literature of the American South. Gwin has taught as a professor at universities across the country, most recently the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She currently lives in Chapel Hill and Albuquerque, New Mexico.
