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The Welsh Fasting Girl Audiobook
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Publisher Description
Twelve-year-old Sarah Jacob was the most famous of the Victorian fasting girls, who claimed to miraculously survive without food, serving as flash points between struggling religious, scientific, and political factions. In this novel based on Sarah’s life and premature death from what may be the first documented case of anorexia, an American journalist, recovering from her husband’s death in the Civil War, leaves her home and children behind to travel to Wales, where she investigates Sarah’s bizarre case by becoming the young girl’s friend and confidante. Unable to prevent the girl’s tragic decline while doctors, nurses, and a local priest keep watch, she documents the curious family dynamic, the trial that convicted Sarah’s parents, and an era’s hysterical need to both believe and destroy Sarah’s seemingly miraculous power.
Intense, dark, and utterly compelling, The Welsh Fasting Girl delves into the complexities of a true story to understand how a culture’s anxieties led to the murder of a child.
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“Varley O’Connor’s beautiful and brilliant novel takes us deep into the mysteries of virtue’s conspiracy with evil and the human spirit’s war against itself. With spot-on historical detail and scintillating language, the novel fascinates and moves us.”
— Stephen O’Connor, author of Orphan Trains
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“The real miracle lies in the capacity of Sarah’s singular, dark fate to illuminate the socioeconomic, religious, scientific, philosophic, and political cultures and conflicts of [the] time…A transcendent historical novel.”
— Foreword Reviews (starred review) -
“A moving, masterful story…O’Connor’s recreation of this world and its people is haunted and haunting, with marvelous poetry and human sorrow resonating in every line.”
— Historical Novels Review -
“Riveting…One of those novels that will linger in the mind and memory of the reader long after the book itself is finished.”
— Midwest Book Review -
“Fascinating yet sad…Utterly compelling to read.”
— Shelf Awareness -
“[A] moving novel…O’Connor’s bleak, powerful story serves as an affecting homage to a girl whose community failed to protect her.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“In this richly textured and compelling novel, O’Connor proves to us that human desire is never simple and that our noblest wishes sometimes provoke our darkest deeds.”
— Mary Morris, author of The Jazz Palace -
“I became enthralled as the mystery of a young girl’s death by starvation unfolds, revealing layers of secrets about family life amid religious and cultural conflicts. O’Connor is a splendid storyteller.”
— Lynne Sharon Schwartz, author of Disturbances in the Field
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About Varley O’Connor
Varley O’Connor is the author of three novels, The Cure, A Company of Three, and Like China. Her short prose has appeared in Faultline: Journal of Art and Literature, AWP Writer’s Chronicle, Driftwood, Algonkian Magazine, the Sun, and in an anthology, Naming the World and Other Exercises for Creative Writers. In fall 2007 she joined the faculty at Kent State University, where in addition to undergraduate creative writing, she teaches fiction and creative nonfiction writing in the Northeast Ohio Universities Consortium MFA program.
About the Narrators
Shiromi Arserio is a stage actor, voice talent, and audiobook narrator from London. She holds a BA in theater from Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance. In addition to narrating dozens of audiobooks, her voice can be heard in documentaries, e-learning projects, and video games.
Marisa Calin is an actress, novelist, and multiple Earphones Award–winning narrator born in England and educated in New York at the American Academy of the Dramatic Arts. An artist with a flair for everything literary, she has written a young adult novel, You & Me, which received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews.