A Fireproof Home for the Bride
A Novel
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3.8 • 30 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Emmaline Nelson and her sister Birdie grow up in the hard, cold rural Lutheran world of strict parents, strict milking times, and strict morals. Marriage is preordained, the groom practically predestined. Though it's 1958, southern Minnesota did not see changing roles for women on the horizon. Caught in a time bubble between a world war and the ferment of the 1960's, Emmy doesn't see that she has any say in her life, any choices at all. Only when Emmy's fiancé shows his true colors and forces himself on her does she find the courage to act—falling instead for a forbidden Catholic boy, a boy whose family seems warm and encouraging after the sere Nelson farm life. Not only moving to town and breaking free from her engagement but getting a job on the local newspaper begins to open Emmy's eyes. She discovers that the KKK is not only active in the Midwest but that her family is involved, and her sense of the firm rules she grew up under—and their effect—changes completely. Amy Scheibe's A FIREPROOF HOME FOR THE BRIDE has the charm of detail that will drop readers into its time and place: the home economics class lecture on cuts of meat, the group date to the diner, the small-town movie theater popcorn for a penny. It also has a love story—the wrong love giving way to the right—and most of all the pull of a great main character whose self-discovery sweeps the plot forward.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Scheibe's fantastic sophomore effort (after What Do You Do All Day?) explores the coming of age of a young Minnesota woman in the late 1950s. Eighteen-year-old Emmy Nelson lives with her joyless, domineering mother, Karin, and feels resigned to her fate of becoming a farm wife. She's known her betrothed, Ambrose Brann, all her life, but lately he's been hostile and abusive. After glimpsing the possibility of a happier life with the help of her best friend, Bev Langer, and her high school guidance counselor, Mr. Utke, Emmy breaks off her engagement and begins seeing Bobby Doyle, a Catholic boy with big dreams. Meanwhile, Ambrose falls under the spell of bigoted family friend Curtis Davidson, whose fear-mongering politics scapegoat the area's Mexican immigrants. As she grows into a cub reporter job, Emmy discovers that the politics might tie into a family secret. Emmy is used to mystery when it comes to her relatives: something big caused her grandmother's estrangement from Emmy's great-aunt. Scheibe's multilayered plot feels organic: the strands are knitted into a tight story of substance that touches on the politics of race, class, and gender without coming off as too preachy. There are a few small flaws: Emmy, for instance, seems awfully progressive for someone who has known nothing but her dour, religious family, and influential bestie Bev abruptly drops out of the story, but overall, the book is spectacular.
Customer Reviews
A Fireproof home for the Bride
A great book. The rare thriller with a deep sense of time and place, true three-dimensional characters and brilliant prose. Compelling, scary, significant and I couldn’t stop reading.