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    Sweet Water: A Novel
    Sweet Water: A Novel
    Sweet Water: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    Sweet Water: A Novel

    Written by Christina Baker Kline

    Narrated by Amy Rubinate and Suzanne Toren

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train, and the critically acclaimed author of Bird in Hand and The Way Life Should Be, comes a novel about buried secrets and the redemptive power of forgiveness—includes a special PS section featuring insights, interviews, and more.

    Cassie Simon is a struggling artist living in New York City.  When she receives a call from a magistrate in Sweetwater, TN, telling her she has inherited sixty acres of land from her grandfather, whom she never knew, she takes it as a sign: it’s time for a change.  She moves into the house where her mother, Ellen, was born—and where she died tragically when Cassie was three.

    From the moment she arrives in Sweetwater, Cassie is overwhelmed by the indelible mark her mother’s memory had left behind.  As she delves into the thicket of mystery that surrounds her mother’s death, Cassie begins to understand the desperate measures the human heart is capable of.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMar 31, 2015
    ISBN9780062393883
    Author

    Christina Baker Kline

    Christina Baker Kline is the author of six novels, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Orphan Train as well as A Piece of the World. She lives outside New York City and spends as much time as possible on the coast of Maine. Learn more about Christina at www.christinabakerkline.com.

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    Reviews for Sweet Water

    3.5/5

    94 ratings10 reviews

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    • 4/5
      It's always fun to read books that are set near where I live. Sweet Water is very good for a first novel...there are a few typographical issues in the Kindle version, from conversion to that format I suppose, but not so many that I was annoyed. The story explores relationships between family and friends, with all the accompanying vulnerability, hurt, betrayal, anger, guilt, etc. A very nice read.
    • 4/5
      A story about a family accident, an old lady’s guilt and a desire to hide the truth. But it’s not that cut and dried just like most family secrets.
    • 2/5
      This was set in a fictional version of my hometown. Lady took a lot of liberties and I kind of wanted to smack her a little.
    • 3/5
      I loved the Orphan Train and therefore was looking forward to reading this one. I have to say, I was somewhat disappointed. I definitely was roped into the story and wanted to get to the secrets but it took a wrong turn for me that I didn't like (without telling all) and the story didn't ring true after that and I feel the whole story took a nose dive.
    • 2/5
      I felt like this book was missing elements to make it come together, especially with an abrupt ending. I don't always need everything wrapped up tidily with a bow, but I almost thought I was missing pages from my ebook. At the same time I feel like this story had totally unnecessary and irrelevant information thrown in.
    • 2/5
      I found this disappointing. The characters were all pretty typecast. The main character was slightly more interesting, but only because she was more flaky than the rest. The narrative had some interesting moments, but the ending was anti-climatic.
    • 2/5
      Cassie Simon, a New York artist is left a house on sixty acres of land in the South by her grandfather (someone she never met). Unhappy with her life in the Big Apple, she decides to move to Tennessee and start life anew and meet the family she never knew. Of course, they are all suspicious of her and wonder why she is there. IS she trying to dig up dirt of her mother’s death and secrets the family has buried? The story starts off well and the characters likable and the narrative descriptive. It deal with family drama and I wanted to know what makes this family tick, but the book ended abruptly like there was a couple of chapters missing from the book. So many questions unanswered and no climax what so ever. Left a bad feeling in my mouth. I was very disappointed with this book.
    • 4/5
      Christina Baker Kline's novel, Orphan Train, is still on the New York Times bestseller list over a year after its publication. It tells the story of a teenage girl, living with a foster family, who meets an elderly woman and finds that the woman was sent from New York City to the Midwest on an orphan train as a young child.Kline's backlist is being rereleased, and I recently read Sweet Water. Like Orphan Train, it tells the story of two women who don't know each other- Cassie Simon, and her grandmother, called Clyde.Cassie leaves her home in New York City after she receives information from a lawyer in Tennessee that her grandfather has died and left her his house and 60 acres of land.Her life in New York is stressful. She works at a gallery and dates the gallery owner who has a wandering eye. She would like a chance to work on her sculptures, and this will give her the opportunity to start over.Cassie's mother Ellen died in a car accident when Cassie was just three years old. Her grandfather was driving the van, and he was drunk at the time. Cassie's father took her away and she hasn't seen her mother's family since then.Cassie alternates the narration with her grandmother Clyde. Clyde's part of the story goes back and forth in time, and we learn that she has a secret- a few of them, actually. We see Clyde as a young woman, a pastor's daughter who yearns to break free who meets a handsome piano player named Amory Clyde who sweeps her off her feet.Clyde and Amory have three children- Horace, Ellen and Elaine. Amory spends much of his time working, and Clyde is left alone with the children. She is lonely and has few friends until she meets Bryce, an exciting, vibrant woman with a secret.Horace and Elaine had hoped to inherit their father's land, and are mistrustful of Cassie. Why would she come back to Tennessee, to a place she doesn't know to family she never met, to live in a rundown house? Why doesn't she just sell it to them?Cassie works on the house, and comes to like the town of Sweet Water. She works on her sculptures during the day and works at a bar at night. She even meets a guy, though he has a secret of his own.The mystery of why Amory left his land to Cassie revolves around the death of Ellen and something that happened a few days prior to Ellen's death. Clyde seems to be hiding this all from Cassie, and Cassie is determined to find out what she is hiding.Kline vividly creates the small town of Sweet Water, with its coffee shop, town park and resident busybodies. Anyone who has lived in small town will find it familiar.The Clyde family dynamic is interesting too. The sibling and cousin relationships ring true, and the family dinner scene and the girls night out felt like the reader was right there in the middle of it all. (I'm a sucker for a good family dinner scene.)Kline has some great lines in the book. Cassie is complaining to her father that her life in New York is ordinary, that she is just "filling a little space I've carved out for myself." Her father reminds her that that is what life is, no matter she may live.When Cassie gives Clyde a ceramic bowl she made, Cassie gives Clyde several suggestions for things to put in it. Clyde asks why she has to put anything it it, and Cassie says "I don't know why, but I always think I have to fill things up." Clyde replies, "I used to feel that way. Now I guess I like things empty." I love that exchange, it tells you a lot about Cassie and Clyde.In the end, I liked Clyde better than Cassie, and I felt much the same about the characters in Orphan Train. The older woman's story resonated more than the young teen. After reading this, I have come to the conclusion it is because the older women have more of a story to tell having lived a longer life.Sweet Water will please fans of Orphan Train. It has a fascinating family story, interesting characters and lots of secrets to uncover.
    • 3/5
      While I was intrigued by the story line of a young woman leaving behind her life in New York to investigate her family history, I thought this book was just alright. I wanted to like the main character more but didn't like some of her choices that she made along the way. The back and forth between the grandmother and granddaughter's story lines was interesting and provided good background but I didn't like many of the family. Many were angry and quick to point fingers at each other. A little disappointing after reading Orphan Train by the same author. Perhaps this one being earlier it was more of a practice leading up to a great novel.
    • 3/5
      I chose this book because it was (1) southern fiction and (2) was the story of a woman starting over, so to speak. I love novels like that. Cassie Simon leaves behind an unfaithful lover and a dead end job at his art studio when she inherits a home from her grandfather in Sweetwater, Tennessee. She packs everything into an old station wagon and heads south to a family she doesn't remember. Having moved north with her yankee jewish father after her mother was killed in a drunk driving accident (the driver was her grandfather) when she was three, Christina knows nothing of Tennessee, the house she has inherited, or the family she has there. What follows is a story of getting to know her family and uncovering dark secrets about a mysterious drowning that took place on the farm shortly before her mother was killed. Each chapter is preceded by the thoughts of her grandmother, known as Clyde, as she thinks about her unhappy marriage. I really didn't enjoy this novel very much. It was sad, dark and dismal. It portrayed southerners as narrow-minded religious nuts, or unintelligent air-heads. It also has incest between cousins, which, although a joke with some northerners, is not accurate at all. Baker justifies the incest in the characters' eyes by saying one of them was adopted. It is still gross and not. It really does nothing to help an already bland story. (Maybe that's how y'all do things up north, but down here, it is just gross.) None of the characters were likable. All were angry, sad, and/ or one-dimensional. There were just too many cliches and stereotypes to make it believable, in my opinion. It was a great plot, but it just fell flat.