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The Empress of One
Growing up in the 1930s and 1940s as a creative child in a restrictive environment, Sally Wheeler struggles to cope with her mother Stella's increasing depression and estrangement from her family.
360 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
About the author
Faith Sullivan
9 books122 followersFaith Sullivan was born and raised in southern Minnesota. Married to drama critic Dan Sullivan, she lived twenty-some years in New York and Los Angeles, returning to Minnesota often to keep her roots planted in the prairie. She is the author of Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse (2015), Gardenias (2005), What a Woman Must Do (2002), The Empress of One (1997), The Cape Ann (1988), Mrs. Demming and The Mythical Beast (1986), Watchdog (1982) and Repent, Lanny Merkel (1981). A “demon gardener, flea marketer, and feeder of birds,” Sullivan lives in Minneapolis with her husband. They have three grown children.
She is the winner of the Midwest Book Award, the Langum Prize for Historical Fiction, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize and the Ben Franklin Prize, and is a Minnesota Book Award Finalist.
She is the winner of the Midwest Book Award, the Langum Prize for Historical Fiction, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize and the Ben Franklin Prize, and is a Minnesota Book Award Finalist.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
December 19, 2017
I loved "The Cape Ann" and "Gardenias", both following the same characters, but this third volume set in Harvester, MN was very disappointing. It continues the saga, but this one felt as though it had been written for middle schoolers. Way too simplistic.
June 13, 2013
Spoiler alert- I'm so annoyed at this book! The first half is so great and then there is this total drop off- like the author got tired of making sense! Which makes the second to last chapter so ironic! The Kingdom of Making Sense- not so much!! No resolution, loose ends everywhere and nothing to show for it at the end. Ugh, I hate when I'm fooled like this by a book. I should have stopped reading and made up my own ending.
May 29, 2017
I read this book years ago and wanted to read The Cape Ann but the library didn't have it. Then I found Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse a few months ago and liked it so much that I decided to read the whole Harvester series. I like the way Faith Sullivan writes about ordinary people and I enjoy reading about life in the 1940s and 1950s as it brings back some good memories. This particular book focused on Sally and it takes her from kindergarten to her graduation from high school. Sally has issues because her mother sinks into a deep depression and is no longer able to function as a mother. She has a kind father and is fortunate to have the support of all four grandparents but the ways in which she misses having a mother are all too evident in the way she goes through life. The Harvester series has many of the same characters in the various books but the focus is on a different character in each, which I really enjoy. I hope there will be more!
June 7, 2022
This is the third book I've read by this author, with overlapping characters, so Lark, Sally, Beverly and the little town of Harvester were familiar. I enjoyed the first 2/3 of the story then it took a very dark turn - and, at the end, left many unanswered questions. 3.75 stars.
July 25, 2024
Raw, gentle, heartbreaking, and profound, this was a fantastic reminder of why I like Faith Sullivan. Her insights into people, pain, and survival grip the reader from start to finish. Recommended for those who enjoy romances, historical fiction, or any story that explores how people cope. There are some strong psychological elements in this, too, that plague the main characters, so that might also appeal. Solid 4.5 stars.
Sally must be strong. Her mother certainly isn’t. Even as a child, she steers the course of her own destiny, embracing her ability to bring others into the world she is crafting. Inevitably, though, circumstances arise that shift the direction of Sally’s goals, creating an inward and downward spiral that mirrors her mother’s. Sally forgets her love for creating a world for others and almost destroys herself in the world where she finds that she can make everyone except herself forget their pain.
While this might sound depressing, it really isn’t. The reader wants over and over for Sally to make the right choice, for the fairy tale ending that Sullivan sets up to come true. It is never quite out of reach.
This honest look at themes of mental distress, depression, looking outward, and finding one’s place combine to create a tone of hope that is consistently woven through the beautiful tapestry of the story.
Crosses characters and storylines with at least two other Sullivan novels.
*****************
Reread review:
Totally worth the reread. Sally and Harvester had been haunting me. I was struck this time by the similarities between Sally and Stella. Both withdrew as a result of some deep hurt (in Sally’s case, because she blamed herself for everything with Mr. Davis—which made me wonder if there was something for which Stella blamed herself irrationally?); both obsessively cleaned; both led with a strong emotion (anger for Sally, sadness for Stella); no one knew how to help either woman—snap out of it, go out and volunteer, buy some new clothes, etc. didn’t touch the surface of the deep turmoil. Lack of empathy isolated them both. However, where Stella wept from her fountains of deep, idealistic sense of wrong in the world, Sally hardened herself, rebelling against all social expectations. When her can’t-look-away-like-a-car-accident relationship comes to a screeching end, she not only loses the boy, she loses a coping mechanism-which plunges her closer to Stella’s spiral. I definitely wondered where the adults in her life were. We see glimpses of their internal awkward observations about Sally and their sense of feeling bound and helpless where she is concerned, but all were afraid to try.
Stella reminded me of the woman who reached for the fringe of Jesus' cloak to be healed, one who had endured much at the hands of doctors but who had not been helped. The physical component of her suffering was so very real and so unfortunate not to have answers for her on that level, much less the emotional one.
I love the lack of resolution in Sally’s character, just the glimmer of hope very implicit in the ending, which fully recognizes that Sally could, once again, reject the good that is right in front of her. But the fact that there is hope drew me back to her story.
I also love Beverly. She annoys me as a child, but she grows into a fresh, honest, blunt young woman who is heading places beyond the boundaries you would expect for someone brought up as she was.
Sally must be strong. Her mother certainly isn’t. Even as a child, she steers the course of her own destiny, embracing her ability to bring others into the world she is crafting. Inevitably, though, circumstances arise that shift the direction of Sally’s goals, creating an inward and downward spiral that mirrors her mother’s. Sally forgets her love for creating a world for others and almost destroys herself in the world where she finds that she can make everyone except herself forget their pain.
While this might sound depressing, it really isn’t. The reader wants over and over for Sally to make the right choice, for the fairy tale ending that Sullivan sets up to come true. It is never quite out of reach.
This honest look at themes of mental distress, depression, looking outward, and finding one’s place combine to create a tone of hope that is consistently woven through the beautiful tapestry of the story.
Crosses characters and storylines with at least two other Sullivan novels.
*****************
Reread review:
Totally worth the reread. Sally and Harvester had been haunting me. I was struck this time by the similarities between Sally and Stella. Both withdrew as a result of some deep hurt (in Sally’s case, because she blamed herself for everything with Mr. Davis—which made me wonder if there was something for which Stella blamed herself irrationally?); both obsessively cleaned; both led with a strong emotion (anger for Sally, sadness for Stella); no one knew how to help either woman—snap out of it, go out and volunteer, buy some new clothes, etc. didn’t touch the surface of the deep turmoil. Lack of empathy isolated them both. However, where Stella wept from her fountains of deep, idealistic sense of wrong in the world, Sally hardened herself, rebelling against all social expectations. When her can’t-look-away-like-a-car-accident relationship comes to a screeching end, she not only loses the boy, she loses a coping mechanism-which plunges her closer to Stella’s spiral. I definitely wondered where the adults in her life were. We see glimpses of their internal awkward observations about Sally and their sense of feeling bound and helpless where she is concerned, but all were afraid to try.
Stella reminded me of the woman who reached for the fringe of Jesus' cloak to be healed, one who had endured much at the hands of doctors but who had not been helped. The physical component of her suffering was so very real and so unfortunate not to have answers for her on that level, much less the emotional one.
I love the lack of resolution in Sally’s character, just the glimmer of hope very implicit in the ending, which fully recognizes that Sally could, once again, reject the good that is right in front of her. But the fact that there is hope drew me back to her story.
I also love Beverly. She annoys me as a child, but she grows into a fresh, honest, blunt young woman who is heading places beyond the boundaries you would expect for someone brought up as she was.
January 14, 2016
The title of this book is borrowed from one of the favorite bedtime stories Don Wheeler reads to his daughter, Sally, as he tries to hold his family together. Stella, his wife, experiences a slow descent into depression, detaching herself further and further from the family she loves at a time when few understood the nature of mental illness or the proper care, leaving the town to gossip, to shun the fragile mother and her little girl, to distance itself from the Wheeler family as if the mother’s disease were contagious.
Covering the time from 1935, when Sally is three years old, through the summer following high school graduation in 1950, Faith Sullivan once again brings the reader to the small town of Harvester, Minnesota, and to characters we know from previous novels. This, however, is Sally Wheeler’s story, all the small moments of resolve to help her mother get well, all the positive and negative influences that shaped her, her coming of age, and her understanding of her life as the “empress of one.”
Balanced with the prejudice and small-mindedness of people in Harvester are the simple kindnesses of the community: Lark’s mother, Arlene Erhardt, Hilly’s mother, Helen Stillman, teachers who had a profound influence, two sets of grandparents, and her father reinventing himself as a teacher/coach so that he could take care of her in the best way he could. The reader relives moments from previous novels from different perspectives such as Lark’s move to California and Hilly Stillman’s suicide in December, 1941, the outbreak of WWII too much for this shell-shocked veteran, and we feel the injustice here, the sadness.
The triumvirate of friends, Sally, Lark and Beverly, changes when Lark moves to California in the very early years. Beverly is a wonderful character and a better friend. With straightforward observations as a young child about an abusive father and hard working mother, immersed in poverty, she is infused with pragmatism and resolve that saves her and then, supports Sally.
So many small moments are captured in this novel. One of my favorites involves Sally’s two grandmothers who have been bewildered by what has happened in the Wheeler family despite their fierce love and protection. Now in April, 1950, Edna, Stella’s mother, observes, “She and Irmgard were becoming the women they ought to have been at thirty, women it had seemed impossible to be at thirty: loving without owning; knowing you were not responsible for everything, that some things would succeed or fail, fall apart or heal entirely on their own; that mistakes were just that, mistakes, not wickedness; and that what other people thought didn’t matter nearly as much as you’d been told.”
What saves us? Lark, the central character of “The Cape Ann,” comments late in the novel, “Everybody has a Magnetic Home, a place that pulls them. This (Harvester) is mine.” Certainly, the family and community that wraps its arms around us, but in the end, just as literature saved Helen Stillman in “Goodnight, Mr. Wodehouse,” literature and art will save Sally, Beverly and Lark. Helen urges Lark, the aspiring writer, “Promise to get us right, wearing our soiled apron, and with our niceness slipping.” That is Harvester, Minnesota, and I’m sorry to be leaving it once again.
Covering the time from 1935, when Sally is three years old, through the summer following high school graduation in 1950, Faith Sullivan once again brings the reader to the small town of Harvester, Minnesota, and to characters we know from previous novels. This, however, is Sally Wheeler’s story, all the small moments of resolve to help her mother get well, all the positive and negative influences that shaped her, her coming of age, and her understanding of her life as the “empress of one.”
Balanced with the prejudice and small-mindedness of people in Harvester are the simple kindnesses of the community: Lark’s mother, Arlene Erhardt, Hilly’s mother, Helen Stillman, teachers who had a profound influence, two sets of grandparents, and her father reinventing himself as a teacher/coach so that he could take care of her in the best way he could. The reader relives moments from previous novels from different perspectives such as Lark’s move to California and Hilly Stillman’s suicide in December, 1941, the outbreak of WWII too much for this shell-shocked veteran, and we feel the injustice here, the sadness.
The triumvirate of friends, Sally, Lark and Beverly, changes when Lark moves to California in the very early years. Beverly is a wonderful character and a better friend. With straightforward observations as a young child about an abusive father and hard working mother, immersed in poverty, she is infused with pragmatism and resolve that saves her and then, supports Sally.
So many small moments are captured in this novel. One of my favorites involves Sally’s two grandmothers who have been bewildered by what has happened in the Wheeler family despite their fierce love and protection. Now in April, 1950, Edna, Stella’s mother, observes, “She and Irmgard were becoming the women they ought to have been at thirty, women it had seemed impossible to be at thirty: loving without owning; knowing you were not responsible for everything, that some things would succeed or fail, fall apart or heal entirely on their own; that mistakes were just that, mistakes, not wickedness; and that what other people thought didn’t matter nearly as much as you’d been told.”
What saves us? Lark, the central character of “The Cape Ann,” comments late in the novel, “Everybody has a Magnetic Home, a place that pulls them. This (Harvester) is mine.” Certainly, the family and community that wraps its arms around us, but in the end, just as literature saved Helen Stillman in “Goodnight, Mr. Wodehouse,” literature and art will save Sally, Beverly and Lark. Helen urges Lark, the aspiring writer, “Promise to get us right, wearing our soiled apron, and with our niceness slipping.” That is Harvester, Minnesota, and I’m sorry to be leaving it once again.
March 22, 2016
I'm so disappointed!! This doesn't mean I thought the book was bad, it just means I didn't like it. I loved The Cape Ann so much. Faith Sullivan writes so beautifully, simply yet majestically, bringing such lovely detailed (yet not overbearing) life to a small Minnesota town and the time period and wrapping so truthfully around a young person and her family life to show how it affects everyone involved. Some of what I liked about The Cape Ann was watching the evolving innocence of the very young main character Lark, and I was excited at the beginning of this book because it was about Lark's best friend Sally at a very young age, in her own family issues. But the book's main focus quickly seems to narrow so that you catch glimpses every now and then of the effect on others beside the main character. Sally's mother Stella begins acting strangely, and young Sally gets a very separated relationship with her mother as she never gets to see her in the asylum. I was far more interested reading Stella's perspectives and wanted to hear more about her, but then she dies, treated almost as an aside, and the second half of the book continues along in a strangely isolating way. Sally's father seems very, unexpectedly, uninvolved in Sally's life, because we just don't read much about him. No one seems to obstruct or help Sally. Cole Barnstable enters and departs Sally's life with little explanation. Clues are thrown in about Katherine Albers's problem life (another possible companion book?), but nothing is done about it (like, nothing follows up after Sally saves Katherine in the lake). The book does feel like it's following Sally's affected behavior from her disrupted family life but it's not actually clear why Sally makes the decisions she does. All we see is what she does, and I really wish I could know what she was thinking. I felt confused throughout the whole second half of the book, and I kept noting behavior because I figured ends would tie up but they never did. Sally grows up and grows up further, almost rushingly, and I'm reading her "going all the way" with boys, when maybe fifty pages ago she was still in elementary school! I even felt a little betrayed, because I didn't know her anymore, so when I finished the book, nothing felt conclusive and I'm left abruptly frustrated, confused, and sad. Sally does seem to be repeating Stella's early behavior, but there's little connection I see that would provoke her to do so. I think this would be a really good book club book, because hashing out the issues could make sense to the story, the characters, and the overall meaning.
July 29, 2009
So I read the Cape Ann and the sequel Gardenias and then decided to read this because I liked her previous books and wanted to follow the character Sally that she mentioned in her other books. So anyway, Sally is seriously messed up! Her mother goes crazy and ends up dying from a burst appendix and Sally likes acting and turns down dates with the fella that would actually be good for her to date his good looking but bad boy cousin. The mood of the book goes from depressing to total despair until I'm sure that Sally is as mentally ill as her mother was.
The book was only ok. Now I'm going to look for a happy story, thank you very much.
There is usually a line or paragraph in every book I read that stands out to me and I am going to start adding that to my reviews. In this book it was "Everyone's born with an obssession, I've always thought, but so many get sidetracked. Men beat their wives and women turn slovenly, all because they wanted to fix cars or be missionaries in China."
The book was only ok. Now I'm going to look for a happy story, thank you very much.
There is usually a line or paragraph in every book I read that stands out to me and I am going to start adding that to my reviews. In this book it was "Everyone's born with an obssession, I've always thought, but so many get sidetracked. Men beat their wives and women turn slovenly, all because they wanted to fix cars or be missionaries in China."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 9, 2016
My “Year of Faith” continues with the 2nd in the Harvester series, “The Empress of One.” For me, reading the Harvester stories is like going home. You know everyone; the streets are familiar; you kinda know what to expect, except you’re seeing the story you’ve read a couple of times before through the eyes of different players. For once, Ms. Sullivan didn’t make me cry – and I enjoyed the story none-the-less.
July 22, 2016
This is my least favorite of the Harvester series. I loved "The Cape Ann" and "Gardenias" because Lark was a sympathetic and engaging narrator, and we were allowed into her head. Sally isn't nearly as well drawn, and really none of the characters in this book are. There are too many points of view -- Sally, Stella, Donald, Edna, and Irmagard's thoughts are described -- and I couldn't find a character to really focus on.
I did appreciate learning how Lark's life went after "Gardenias."
I did appreciate learning how Lark's life went after "Gardenias."
September 5, 2016
After reading four of Faith Sullivan's novels, I have learned that she has a penchant for revisiting characters and overlapping timelines. Whatever order her novels are read in, it is almost inevitable that there will be spoilers. It doesn't matter. Sullivan has a knack for producing a compelling chronicle about often unfortunate events the reader is anticipating, whether by expanding the context or delving deeper into the characters.
January 17, 2017
Sally Wheeler is The Empress of One. When Sally is five, her father reads her the story of “The Empress of One Hundred,” about an empress who almost loses her whole kingdom when citizens drift away seeking neighboring villages’ monthly parties the empress bans in her own town after a subject is killed by an ogre. The empress finds the parties frivolous in light of the town’s loss. At the suggestion of a beloved advisor, the empress reinstates the parties, and with them her own joy. When Sally is a teenager, her father accuses her of becoming an “empress of one,” of shutting out all her loved ones because of her sadness. Old friends cajole Sally to find her passion again. In so doing, she embraces her father’s accusation as a point of pride: she gains command of herself, regal in her bearing as an actress, daughter, granddaughter and friend.
The second of five stories about Harvester, Minnesota, after Cape Ann, this one focuses again on the place of imagination in the process of healing. Shortly after her father reads her The Empress of One, Sally’s mother is committed to a mental institution in St. Peter. Sally not only endures her mother’s increasing distance during her grade school years, but then her absence and the taunts of her school mates, as well as her father’s divided attention as he builds a teaching career and cares for her. She wonders if she will follow her mother’s fate, and, indeed, in high school she almost comes undone. She falls in love with Cole Barnstable, cousin to Neddy Barnstable, who’s always had a crush on Sally. Cole is brash and brazen to Neddy’s calm politeness. “I feel like I’ve known Cole since Day One of the Universe, like we came from the same lump of clay. When I put my hand on his arm… it’s as if two parts of me that got separated a million years ago are back together.” But Cole needs more than Sally can give. When she won’t give up the only thing keeping her in school, he takes revenge. And in return for Cole’s trouble, Sally accepts Neddy Barnstable’s request to write and act with him and the other Harvest Moon Motleys acting troupe, started by their late speech teacher M. Davis. She calls her piece The Kingdom of Making Sense.
If not in honor of Mr. Davis, Sally says she wouldn’t have done the play. Faith Sullivan sets Cole’s revengeful act against Sally’s brave memorial to a teacher who caused a scandal in the town but compelled Sally to recognize her gift for acting. Before Sally’s debut in acting, narrating the second grade Christmas program, her teacher gets her out on stage, encouraging her to “give everyone a Christmas present… make them forget that the car wouldn’t start this morning, and the dog died last night, and all we had to eat this week was beans and bread…. I chose you for narrator because I knew you could do that.” Not only does Sally succeed in her narration, she succeeds that Christmas in pretending Santa is real, to please her grandparents. She waits for them at the tree Christmas morning, calling, “come see what Santa brought!” It isn’t just presents, but a great actress of a granddaughter, who uses her acting as a gift for others.
Sally’s acting is as much a gift to others as it is healing to herself. Mr. Davis casts her as Emily in Our Town even after a lackluster audition. When he calls her in to tell her, she asks, “you sure this isn’t some kind of therapy?” He reassures her that, “I’m casting you as Emily because you’ll do the best job.” Of course, he knows playing the part will heal her from the tragedy of her home and love life, but that that isn’t why she’s compelled to act. Her mother’s committal and subsequent death, as well as a failing love affair, certainly give her reason to escape into the world of pretend, but they can’t sustain her commitment. When Cole asks her why she needs to be in Our Town, against his wishes, she answers, “‘because I can die and come back as somebody else.’ She couldn’t think of anything more satisfying, necessary, impossible to explain, or impossible for someone else to understand, than that.” Propelled into acting against forces in her life from which she runs, acting gives an ultimate gift back to her.
Sally comes of age in this novel, and at the same time becomes tangible evidence of art’s life-giving properties. Just as Sally finds rejuvenation and purpose in acting, we readers find solace and hope in Faith Sullivan’s novel about her. We enter the kingdom where ogres roam, wars rage, loved ones die, and where pleasure is still possible, through our own creative acts and experiences. We further explore such creations in subsequent novels about Harvester: Gardenias, What a Woman Must Do, and Goodnight, Mr. Wodehouse.
The second of five stories about Harvester, Minnesota, after Cape Ann, this one focuses again on the place of imagination in the process of healing. Shortly after her father reads her The Empress of One, Sally’s mother is committed to a mental institution in St. Peter. Sally not only endures her mother’s increasing distance during her grade school years, but then her absence and the taunts of her school mates, as well as her father’s divided attention as he builds a teaching career and cares for her. She wonders if she will follow her mother’s fate, and, indeed, in high school she almost comes undone. She falls in love with Cole Barnstable, cousin to Neddy Barnstable, who’s always had a crush on Sally. Cole is brash and brazen to Neddy’s calm politeness. “I feel like I’ve known Cole since Day One of the Universe, like we came from the same lump of clay. When I put my hand on his arm… it’s as if two parts of me that got separated a million years ago are back together.” But Cole needs more than Sally can give. When she won’t give up the only thing keeping her in school, he takes revenge. And in return for Cole’s trouble, Sally accepts Neddy Barnstable’s request to write and act with him and the other Harvest Moon Motleys acting troupe, started by their late speech teacher M. Davis. She calls her piece The Kingdom of Making Sense.
If not in honor of Mr. Davis, Sally says she wouldn’t have done the play. Faith Sullivan sets Cole’s revengeful act against Sally’s brave memorial to a teacher who caused a scandal in the town but compelled Sally to recognize her gift for acting. Before Sally’s debut in acting, narrating the second grade Christmas program, her teacher gets her out on stage, encouraging her to “give everyone a Christmas present… make them forget that the car wouldn’t start this morning, and the dog died last night, and all we had to eat this week was beans and bread…. I chose you for narrator because I knew you could do that.” Not only does Sally succeed in her narration, she succeeds that Christmas in pretending Santa is real, to please her grandparents. She waits for them at the tree Christmas morning, calling, “come see what Santa brought!” It isn’t just presents, but a great actress of a granddaughter, who uses her acting as a gift for others.
Sally’s acting is as much a gift to others as it is healing to herself. Mr. Davis casts her as Emily in Our Town even after a lackluster audition. When he calls her in to tell her, she asks, “you sure this isn’t some kind of therapy?” He reassures her that, “I’m casting you as Emily because you’ll do the best job.” Of course, he knows playing the part will heal her from the tragedy of her home and love life, but that that isn’t why she’s compelled to act. Her mother’s committal and subsequent death, as well as a failing love affair, certainly give her reason to escape into the world of pretend, but they can’t sustain her commitment. When Cole asks her why she needs to be in Our Town, against his wishes, she answers, “‘because I can die and come back as somebody else.’ She couldn’t think of anything more satisfying, necessary, impossible to explain, or impossible for someone else to understand, than that.” Propelled into acting against forces in her life from which she runs, acting gives an ultimate gift back to her.
Sally comes of age in this novel, and at the same time becomes tangible evidence of art’s life-giving properties. Just as Sally finds rejuvenation and purpose in acting, we readers find solace and hope in Faith Sullivan’s novel about her. We enter the kingdom where ogres roam, wars rage, loved ones die, and where pleasure is still possible, through our own creative acts and experiences. We further explore such creations in subsequent novels about Harvester: Gardenias, What a Woman Must Do, and Goodnight, Mr. Wodehouse.
September 13, 2024
I loved returning to these familiar characters, having met them before in Faith Sullivan's other works. It was a sad read, but it was good, this time told from the perspective of Sally, whose mother is eventually committed, and in a small town a thing like that is never a secret. Another enjoyable book by Ms Sullivan.
August 19, 2017
A very pleasant companion to The Cape Ann and the folks of Harvester. Seemed a bit lengthy with a bit more detail than new essay to tell the story of Sally. Glad to learn what happened to Lark.
Suggest reading The Cape Ann first
Suggest reading The Cape Ann first
August 19, 2018
A story with flesh and blood characters living real life, The Empress Of One is set in Monnesota and tells the story of Sally Wheeler and her family. With a crazy mother and a passion for theater, Sally young life is portra
June 16, 2017
The characters and setting are the same as in Cape Ann, however the story is told from a completely different viewpoint. Not quite as good as Cape Ann.
September 20, 2019
Audiobook.
October 23, 2019
Heartbreakingly beautiful
March 14, 2022
I like this author's characters and could invest in them, but I found the ending unsatisfying
August 16, 2022
After all the conflict-internal and external- Sally (the main character) suffered through, it would be nice to have SOME sort of resolution. Too much to ask?
March 1, 2017
Good story - Faith Sullivan is becoming one of my favorite novelists.
August 12, 2011
The Empress of One is the sequel to The Cape Ann, which interestingly enough is the name of an architectural house plan. Empress of One continues the story of a mother and daughter, poor and wanting more for themselves, struggling with mental illness and fighting their way through life. It is a quiet book. A book about ordinary folks who could easily be invisible in any community. There's a sadness that doesn't go away at the end of the book, probably because readers know people in similar situations and readers' kids go to school with children living in similar circumstances. I was left with a sense of hopelessness. Not an upper!
February 3, 2013
I read this book for the first time about 15 years ago, and it was like making a new best friend. I had loved The characters "The Cape Ann" so I was pleased to have an opportunity to revisit some of them.
I can't point to exactly what it is about this book that made it so special. If I had to say one thing it would be the absolute truth of the characters. Maybe, being from Minnesota, there is a familiarity, but the things they do and say feel real. THere is no contrivance.
I love this book and when I finish it I want to turn it over and visit the world of Harvester again.
I can't point to exactly what it is about this book that made it so special. If I had to say one thing it would be the absolute truth of the characters. Maybe, being from Minnesota, there is a familiarity, but the things they do and say feel real. THere is no contrivance.
I love this book and when I finish it I want to turn it over and visit the world of Harvester again.
August 18, 2009
Just as with her book Gardenias which is a sequel to The Cape Ann, at first I did not like this book as well. As time proceeded and we moved past the events of The Cape Ann and the story of Sally took off I was nearly as impressed. Sullivan does a great job of expressing the emotions of young girls and their love/hate realationships with family and friends. Some of the elements were repetitive such as the loving grandparents, mental depression that were in the other books about Sally and Lark.
December 22, 2008
With this writing, Sullivan enters the lives of Stella & Sally Wheeler, who were tangential characters in her book 'The Cape Ann'. From the former work, we know that Stella Wheeler goes down into a fetal-posture depression. This book follows the internal workings of Stella's mental illness and its blighting effect in both Stella and others, particularly her little daughter Sally.
August 19, 2011
Confusing at first because it is the same story as The Cape Ann but from a different person's point of view, like novels by Elizabeth George with one from a social point of view and another from a police point of view. That said, well written and interesting.
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July 3, 2016(written 07.02.2016)
attempted earlier this year; I just found it very boring, very quickly; might have given up too early as I liked another in this series enough to have purchased this one via Robie Books, Berea, KY; attempted early, ‘2016
attempted earlier this year; I just found it very boring, very quickly; might have given up too early as I liked another in this series enough to have purchased this one via Robie Books, Berea, KY; attempted early, ‘2016
July 4, 2016
I am head over heels for Harvester, Minnesota and the magnificent characters that Faith Sullivan creates. With each book there is overlap, but you learn more about the different townsfolk. What a pleasure it is to have discovered an author as gifted and honest as Faith Sullivan.
August 25, 2016
Just beautiful. A great story with most of the same characters from the other books set in the fictional Harvester MN. I love the characters, and how the stories make me feel immersed in small-town midwestern life in the early 20th century.
October 21, 2007
A disappointment after reading the Cape Ann. It got too long and wasn't as charming.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews