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The Rose Thieves
The Rose Thieves gives us the Vanderwald flamboyant, hot-tempered Lila, who feels trapped living in a small New England town; her sentimental, eternally optimistic husband, a failed futures-market investor; and their children. An affectionate daughter steals flowers from gardens all over town for her big sister's sixteenth birthday. A tea party for the local minister is turned upside down by a four-year-old's remark. Sheep wander through the kitchen, an enraged mother swan menaces the sisters as their own mother entertains a possible lover, and, after a near-disaster, Lila proclaims "We faced death; death couldn't face us!" Amidst the chaos, Kate, the oldest daughter, practices piano because "Haydn will give
order to everything, if only you play him right."
With wit, natural artistry, and a keen eye for the absurd, Heidi Jon Schmidt effortlessly weaves stories of strange but all-too-real family life.
order to everything, if only you play him right."
With wit, natural artistry, and a keen eye for the absurd, Heidi Jon Schmidt effortlessly weaves stories of strange but all-too-real family life.
176 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1990
15 people want to read
About the author
Heidi Jon Schmidt
8 books25 followersHEIDI JON SCHMIDT is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and author of five books, THE HARBORMASTER'S DAUGHTER,THE HOUSE ON OYSTER CREEK, THE BRIDE OF CATASTROPHE, DARLING? and THE ROSE THIEVES
Her essays and stories have been published in The New York Times,The Atlantic, Grand Street, Yankee, The Boston Globe etc., and heard on National Public Radio. Her stories have been included in The O'Henry Awards, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Twenty under Thirty and others.
She is married to the writer RD Skillings, and has lived in Provincetown Massachusetts for 30 years.
The Washington Post Book World has said "It is impossible to disentangle the comic from the tragic in Schmidt's writing. She is incapable of cliche."
Goodreads is telling me my influence list is too long (and I was being very minimalist!) so I will put it here instead! George Eliot, John Cheever, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Philip Roth, Oscar Wilde, Veronica Geng, Alice Munro, Katharine Mansfield, John Steinbeck
Her essays and stories have been published in The New York Times,The Atlantic, Grand Street, Yankee, The Boston Globe etc., and heard on National Public Radio. Her stories have been included in The O'Henry Awards, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Twenty under Thirty and others.
She is married to the writer RD Skillings, and has lived in Provincetown Massachusetts for 30 years.
The Washington Post Book World has said "It is impossible to disentangle the comic from the tragic in Schmidt's writing. She is incapable of cliche."
Goodreads is telling me my influence list is too long (and I was being very minimalist!) so I will put it here instead! George Eliot, John Cheever, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Philip Roth, Oscar Wilde, Veronica Geng, Alice Munro, Katharine Mansfield, John Steinbeck
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December 28, 2011
The Rose Thieves is a short novel (156 pages) and an easy read. The family members are fascinating and you wonder how they manage to ever be happy, but they do. The author's style was to write short stories that all meshed together in the end. I recommend this one for a long summer afternoon at the beach or back at the cabin when it rains.
Displaying 1 of 1 review