Name: The Daughters of Erietown
Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Author: Connie Schultz

About this book

Summary

Book Summary

Hidden desires, long-held secrets, and the sacrifices people make for family are at the heart of this powerful first novel by the popular Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist.

1957, Clayton Valley, Ohio. Ellie has the best grades in her class. Her dream is to go to nursing school and marry Brick McGinty. A basketball star, Brick has the chance to escape his abusive father and become the first person in his blue-collar family to attend college. But when Ellie learns that she is pregnant, everything changes. Just as Brick and Ellie revise their plans and build a family, a knock on the front door threatens to destroy their lives.

The evolution of women's lives spanning the second half of the twentieth century is at the center of this beautiful novel that richly portrays how much people know—and pretend not to know—about the secrets at the heart of a town, and a family.

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Media Reviews

"Like Jennifer Weiner's Mrs. Everything ... the novel sharply illuminates evolving social mores and tucks in plenty of womanly wisdom... . A masterful debut novel." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Schultz enlivens the narrative with sharp cultural commentary and precise period details. This story of family secrets rises above—and is tougher than—the rest." - Publishers Weekly

"Schultz offers up a deep exploration of the inner lives of one family. Their hopes, desires, and heartaches blaze forth on every page. A moving, unforgettable story about time, progress, and how the mistakes of one generation get repeated or repaired by the next." - J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of Saints for All Occasions

"Connie Schultz's The Daughters of Erietown is a quiet force of a novel. It crept up on me, much the same way that time creeps up on these characters. I was struck by how well Schultz portrays a full life—childhood to old age—and all the small moments that shape us, for better or for worse. Its ambitious scope will leave readers wanting to curl up with it until they've finished." - Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes

"This is a big, deep, warm, and moving story of unforgettable women who make and shape their families. With the eye and ear of a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and the insight and language of a born storyteller, Schultz immerses us in The Daughters of Erietown, from love to loss and back." - Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of White Houses

This information about The Daughters of Erietown was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own review

Cathryn Conroy

A Bit of a Soap Opera Plot, but It’s a Captivating Story That Brilliantly Captures a Bygone Era
As much as this is the story of a marriage, it is even more a story of a bygone era when men were the ones who went to work, women were housewives, races and ethnicities lived in separate neighborhoods, and Dad’s word—no matter how unfair—ruled. This is a story that will take you back in time to a place that some still call "the good old days" even if they really weren’t.

Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist Connie Schultz, this is the story of Brick and Ellie, high school sweethearts in 1957 who "have" to get married when Ellie gets pregnant before they even graduate. Both come from troubled backgrounds—Brick’s dad physically abuses him, while Ellie’s father abandoned her to her grandparents after his wife died. They find solace in each other. But the pregnancy changes everything when Brick must turn down a basketball scholarship to Kent State University, and Ellie gives up her dreams of nursing school. The novel spans nearly 40 years as Brick and Ellie build a life together that is sorely tested by mistakes big and small, infidelity, heartbreak, and seismic societal changes.

While this book is almost 500 pages long, it’s a fast read. The plot, filled with family secrets and tension, keeps the reader turning those pages. Yes, some of it is quite predictable and sometimes too much like a soap opera, but it’s still a captivating book that brilliantly captures the era.

One of the main "characters" is the setting of the fictional Northeast Ohio town of Erietown. If you’re a baby boomer who grew up in Northeast Ohio during the ‘50s, ‘60s and early ‘70s, you’ll enjoy the shoutouts to such favorites as children’s show hosts Barnaby and Captain Penny, Indians announcer Herb Score, Lawson’s convenience store and its famous French onion dip, Higbee’s department store in downtown Cleveland and its Silver Grille, CKLW radio station, lake effect snow, and Ohio heroes John and Annie Glenn.

Dottie

Real Life
Book covers family life thru 60-70-80's. Small town, small choices or do they lead to big choices or being stuck in the same dreams. Descriptions of each character come alive and carries reader from youth to older generations. Social conditions are things of the past but so real in this time. Quick read and good for book discussions.

Virginia Canalos

Predictable
Predictable, one dimensional characters.

MaryBeth

The Daughters of Erietown by Connie Schultz
This book is a story of the lives of women in the 1950s through the last seventies. Specifically in some cases about their lack of choice and the consequences of not having control over their choice to have children. I found the writing tedious and juvenile. The plot was was predictable, but that may be because I was born in 1955. This is a nice story, but I found it boring.

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Author Information

Biography

Connie Schultz

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer and a professional-in-residence in the journalism school at Kent State University, her alma mater. She is the author of two memoirs, Life Happens and ...And His Lovely Wife. Schultz lives in Cleveland with her husband, Sherrod Brown, and their rescue dogs Franklin and Walter. They have four children and seven grandchildren.

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