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All Waiting Is Long
by Barbara J. Taylor

Published: 2016-07-05
Paperback : 288 pages
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"Powerful...Every page is saturated with the 1930s milieu as the sisters navigate the adversities of their reality on a sea rough with the unrealistic expectations of well-intended idealists both religious and secular. As if to highlight those expectations, Taylor periodically interrupts ...
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"Powerful...Every page is saturated with the 1930s milieu as the sisters navigate the adversities of their reality on a sea rough with the unrealistic expectations of well-intended idealists both religious and secular. As if to highlight those expectations, Taylor periodically interrupts her third-person narrative with Greek chorus-type commentary from the Scranton-based Isabelle Lumley Bible Class, including excerpts from a 1929 sex manual for women. The overall result is a thought-provoking book club discussion cornucopia."
--Booklist, Starred review

"Set in the 1930s, Taylor's suspenseful and intricate follow-up to Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night tells the story of sisters Violet and Lily Morgan...Taylor delivers startling plot twists and incisive commentary on the social unrest of a coal-mining town during the Great Depression. Covering a six-year span, the novel reveals the consequences of arduous labor and widespread sterilizations that came with the eugenics movement. Among the prostitutes, mobsters, and miners is a web of interconnected lives that come together for a breathtaking ending in Taylor's fine sequel."
--Publishers Weekly

"In this richly populated community, old ties are either torn or tightened, and the characters left behind when the sisters went off are nicely fleshed out...Ms. Taylor writes with total mastery of her craft. Her similes and metaphors are born of a highly developed abstractive sensitivity, and her dialogues are unerringly true to their respective speakers."
--BookPleasures

"Taylor deftly weaves a tale that quickly pulls you in wondering what will become of [Lily and Violet Morgan] and the lies they've propped up around themselves to make it all work. Will their relationship survive? And if the truth were to come out, what would their husbands, family and the townsfolk think?...You won't be disappointed with Taylor's newest novel."
--A New Day

"A story of love that rises from the depths to create happiness in an unforgiving world...A good read."
--Journey of a Bookseller

"In All Waiting is Long, Taylor once again performs the magic trick of making us fall in love with characters who live in her finely drawn, unforgiving past, and who grapple with the indelible consequences of honor and dishonor, hope and disappointment, and the mystifying nature of tragedy and love. I read this book in two sittings, flying through the pages, seduced."
--Robin Oliveira, author of I Always Loved You

The latest novel in Akashic's Kaylie Jones Books imprint.

All Waiting Is Long tells the stories of the Morgan sisters, a study in contrasts. In 1930, twenty-five-year-old Violet travels with her sixteen-year-old sister Lily from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to the Good Shepherd Infant Asylum in Philadelphia, so Lily can deliver her illegitimate child in secret. In doing so, Violet jeopardizes her engagement to her longtime sweetheart, Stanley Adamski. Meanwhile, Mother Mary Joseph, who runs the Good Shepherd, has no idea the asylum's physician, Dr. Peters, is involved in eugenics and experimenting on the girls with various sterilization techniques.

Five years later, Lily and Violet are back home in Scranton, one married, one about to be, each finding her own way in a place where a woman's worth is tied to her virtue. Against the backdrop of the sweeping eugenics movement and rogue coal mine strikes, the Morgan sisters must choose between duty and desire. Either way, they risk losing their marriages and each other.

The novel picks up sixteen years after the close of Barbara J. Taylor's debut novel, Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night--a Publishers Weekly Best Summer Book of 2014--and continues her Dickensian exploration of the Morgan sisters and other characters of Scranton in the early twentieth century.

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