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Published Jul 2016
320 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
From a critically acclaimed fiction writer comes the moving story of a boy with extraordinary ears who - with the help of a cache of his great-grandmother's letters - brings healing to a town burdened by the sins of its past.
Young Maris has been summoned to his mother's bedside as she nears the end of her life; she feels she must tell him her version of their family history, the story of his early life, and the ways in which he changed the lives of others. Maris was born with what some might call a blessing and others might deem a curse: his very large, very special ears enable him to hear the secrets of the dead, as well as the memories that haunt his Latvian hometown. Nestled in the woodlands on the banks of the Aiviekste River, their town suffered the ravages of war, then the cold shock of independence. As a boy, Maris found himself heir to an odd assortment of hidden letters; a school project provided the chance to share them, forcing the town to hear the truth from the past and face what it meant for their future.
With "luminous writing [and] affection for her characters" (New York Times), Gina Ochsner creates an intimate, hopeful portrait of a fascinating town in all its complications and charm. She shows us how, despite years of distrust, a community can come through love and loss to the joy of understanding - enabled by a great-grandmother's legacy, a flood, and a boy with very special ears.
"Starred Review. [A] beautifully spun tale… Ochsner bewitches the reader with layer upon layer of spellbinding storytelling...An astonishing alchemy of history, romance, and fable." - Kirkus
"In Ochsner's...strange, vivid second novel, a woman in a tiny Latvian village traces the magic-infused story of her life...Through bizarre, often hilarious vignettes featuring a cast of colorful characters and slapstick moments, Inara's tale comes to light… Ochsner has created an entire town filled with characters who display eccentric habits and engage in sharp-tongued banter, bringing a touch of believability to even the book's most out-there anecdotes. Humor, mythology, and an immersive setting, as well as a few poignant and visceral moments as family secrets are revealed, render this a memorable tale." - Publishers Weekly
"Though sometimes slow paced, the novel is, nevertheless, artful in Inara's beautifully realized voice and in the characters Ochsner brings to vivid life." - Booklist
"A captivating novel of secrets, love, and memory, The Hidden Letters of Velta B. revels in the tragicomedy that is life itself, binding the poignancy of human dreams to accidents of circumstance... This terrific novel knocked me out." – Janet Fitch, author of Paint It Black and White Oleandar
"In Gina Ochsner's extraordinary feat of storytelling, a dying mother seeks to armor her son with the power of myth and the strength of family history. The stories she tells are as rich as roasted eel from the river, but the ugly truth of their Latvian town's history keeps poking through like rocks in the hard cemetery ground. A spellbinding novel as tough as it is beautiful." – Helen Simonson, author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
This information about The Hidden Letters of Velta B. was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Gina Ochsner is the author of two collections of short stories, People I Wanted to Be and The Necessary Grace to Fall, both of which won the Oregon Book Award, and a novel, The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight, which was longslisted for the Orange Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She is a recipient of the Flannery O'Connor Award, an NEA grant, a Guggenheim, and the Raymond Carver Prize.
Gina lives in Salem, Oregon with her husband, three children and two canine children. She serves as Corban University's Writer in Residence, as well as serving on the faculty in the Masters of Fine Arts - Creative Writing program at Seattle Pacific University.
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