White Oleander : A Novel

As Astrid bumps from trailer park to tract house to Hollywood bungalow, White Oleander uncoils her existential anxieties. "Who was I, really?" she asks. "I was the sole occupant of my mother's totalitarian state, my own personal history rewritten to fit the story she was telling that day. There were so many missing pieces." Fitch adroitly leads Astrid down a path of sorting out her past and identity. In the process, this girl develops a wire-tight inner strength, gains her mother's white-blonde beauty, and achieves some measure of control over their relationship. Even from prison, Ingrid tries to mold her daughter. Foiling her, Astrid learns about tenderness from one foster mother and how to stand up for herself from another. Like the weather in Los Angeles--the winds of the Santa Anas, the scorching heat--Astrid's teenage life is intense. Fitch's novel deftly displays that, and also makes Astrid's life meaningful. --Katherine Anderson

From AudioFile
Endorsed by reader Oprah Winfrey as an "Oprah's Book Club" selection, WHITE OLEANDER is the intimate story of a mother and daughter who are bound together by the power of their passionate and creative spirits. Oprah Winfrey does not let listeners down with her performance, bringing to life mother Ingrid, a poet and endless seducer of men, and her daughter, Astrid, who loves her mother so deeply that she kills the man who left them both. Winfrey is known for her demand for quality in the books she supports, and that is no less true for this audio presentation. Indeed, it is her own talent that raises the production level from its already remarkable intensity. R.A.P. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.