In Our Quiet Village by Mary Lou Chayes - Free Excerpt

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11/05/2009

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An ageing mother reveals the shocking secrets of her past in this family saga spanning three generations.

Ninety-year old Minna and her daughter... (More) An ageing mother reveals the shocking secrets of her past in this family saga spanning three generations.

Ninety-year old Minna and her daughter Julie have a strained relationship. Julie has stored up resentments from her past; having been sent off to a boarding school as a young girl and estranged from her family, she has kept much of her life secret from her mother. Minna, too has not been entirely truthful about her own past. When she visits Julie, Minna decides to unburden herself from the painful secrets of her childhood. When Minna was sixteen years old, her father shot at his second wife, then turned the gun on himself and committed suicide. This violent incident created a shameful scandal in the quiet village in New York’s Mohawk valley, and it changed the course of Minna’s life forever.

In Our Quiet Village by author Mary Lou Chayes, tells the true story of Minna’s family, beginning at the turn of the last century when her mother and father, both German immigrants, meet and fall in love. Karl and Susanna have two children, Hans and Minna and a third child who dies in infancy. The story of Minna’s family begins like that of many other families of that time, with happiness and hardship going hand in hand. However, Susanna’s life is tragically cut short by pneumonia, leaving Karl a widower with two children to care for. When Karl’s distant cousin, Herta writes from Germany to apply for the job of housekeeper, he believes he has found the solution to the family’s problems. After he marries her, she is revealed to be mentally unstable, full of anger and self-loathing. Life becomes a living hell.

In Our Quiet Village is a family saga that spans three generations. This love story turned tragedy plays out against a backdrop of a historically significant time in U.S. history, tracing the rise of the labor movement and the struggle for women’s suffrage. Chayes includes actual photographs of the family as well as the headline article from the local newspaper that reported the fateful incident.
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