The story of Emma Tate, a privileged Southern woman, who finds herself caught in the Civil War, an event which influenced and changed her life.

A sequel to the now-classic "Ellen Foster" picks up Ellen's life five years later, at 15, with a new mother, a home, a mind too large for her surroundings, and a brave and compassionate integrity.

A “vivid, unsentimental, powerful” portrait of a Southern marriage by the New York Times–bestselling author of Ellen Foster (Publishers Weekly). “She hasn’t been dead four months and I’ve already eaten to the bottom of the deep freeze. I even ate the green peas. Used to I wouldn’t turn my hand over for green peas . . .” Ruby Stokes has died too young and left her husband, Blinking Jack, behind. With alternating entries from each of them, A Virtuous Woman recounts the tale of their years together in an “exquisitely realised piece of writing” (Elizabeth Buchan, The Mail on Sunday). From their very different backgrounds—Ruby a daughter of wealth, Jack a penniless tenant farmer—to their relationships with their landlord and his family, and the strength they drew from each other in the face of hardship, this story of a marriage is “full of fantastically gritty metaphors . . . A book that will change your dreams” (The Observer). “Gibbons again flawlessly reproduces the humor and idiom of rural eastern North Carolina.” —Library Journal

"Filled with lively humor, compassion, and intimacy." —Alice Hoffman, The New York Times Book Review "When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy." With that opening sentence we enter the childhood world of one of the most appealing young heroines in contemporary fiction. Her courage, her humor, and her wisdom are unforgettable as she tells her own story with stunning honesty and insight. An Oprah Book Club selection, this powerful novel has become an American classic. Winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and the Ernest Hemingway Foundation's Citation for Fiction.

On a wild, windy April day in Manhattan, when Mary first meets John Keane, she cannot know what lies ahead of her. A marriage, a fleeting season of romance, and the birth of four children will bring John and Mary to rest in the safe embrace of a traditional Catholic life in the suburbs. But neither Mary nor John, distracted by memories and longings, can feel the wind that is buffeting their children, leading them in directions beyond their parents’ control. Michael and his sister Annie are caught up in the sexual revolution. Jacob, brooding and frail, is drafted to Vietnam. And the youngest, Clare, commits a stunning transgression after a childhood spent pleasing her parents. As John and Mary struggle to hold on to their family and their faith, Alice McDermott weaves an elegant, unforgettable portrait of a world in flux–and of the secrets and sorrows, anger and love, that lie at the heart of every family.