Books with author Jessamyn West

A quintessential American heroine, Eliza Birdwell is a wonderful blend of would-be austerity, practicality, and gentle humor when it comes to keeping her faith and caring for her family and community. Her husband, Jess, shares Eliza's love of people and peaceful ways but, unlike Eliza, also displays a fondness for a fast horse and a lively tune. With their children, they must negotiate their way through a world that constantly confronts them-sometimes with candor, sometimes with violence-and tests the strength of their beliefs. Whether it's a gift parcel arriving on their doorstep or Confederate soldiers approaching their land, the Birdwells embrace life with emotion, conviction, and a love for one another that seems to conquer all. The Friendly Persuasion has charmed generations of readers as one of our classic tales of the American Midwest.

The tenderly funny story of a modern girl’s growing up.Cress Delahanty, growing up on a California ranch, might have been you at sixteen, your teenage daughter or niece, or the girl next door. You will watch her progress, as her parents did, with amusement and an occasional touch of exasperation and a twinge of heartache at the memory of your own growing pains.She’s the girl who invented Delahanty’s Law for Saving Time. The high-school kid who decided craziness would be her trademark. The love-smitten adolescent who found a unique way to attract the boys.Not since Penrod—that classic by another Indiana author—has the magic, the humor and the seriousness of adolescence been so warmly and sympathetically portrayed in an American novel.“An enchanting novel…those still capable of feeling the absurdity and the beauty of growing up will find it a book well worth treasuring in that library of libraries, the heart.”—CLIFTON FADIMAN, The book-of-the-Month Club News“Cress Delahanty has all the makings of a classic.”—Hartford Courant“An extraordinarily engaging, humorous and touching book about a teenage girl.”—The New York Times“It does for an adolescent girl what Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye did for her male counterpart.”—Los Angeles Mirror

Cress Delahanty remains one of the most intrepid and beloved teenagers in all American literature. Amid the clotted oil fields and pungent orange groves of rural 1940s California, the young woman explores her family’s citrus ranch, worries about boys, attempts to negotiate the high school social ladder, and suffers embarrassments, big and small, in a tenacious search for her own identity.

The Birdwells are a pacifist Quaker family in southern Indiana during the Civil War. A quintessential American heroine, Eliza Birdwell is a wonderful blend of would-be austerity, practicality, and gentle humor when it comes to keeping her faith and caring for her family and community. Her husband, Jess, shares Eliza's love of people and peaceful ways but, unlike Eliza, also displays a fondness for a fast horse and a lively tune. With their children, they must negotiate their way through a world that constantly confronts them -- sometimes with candor, sometimes with violence -- and tests the strength of their beliefs.Whether it's a gift parcel arriving on their doorstep or Confederate soldiers approaching their land, the Birdwells embrace life with humor, emotion, conviction, and love.

Excerpt from Cress DelahantyShe listened' for her second heart-beat, the tap of the loosened shingle. But it was dead, it beat no more. For three days the Santa Ana had buffeted the house, but now at evening it had died down, had blown itself out. It was blown out, but it left its signs: the piled sand by the east doorsills; the tumbleweeds caught in the angle of the corral; the signboard by the electric tracks, face down; the eucalyptus with torn limb dangling.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

A quintessential American heroine, Eliza Birdwell is a wonderful blend of would-be austerity, practicality, and gentle humor when it comes to keeping her faith and caring for her family and community. Her husband, Jess, shares Eliza's love of people and peaceful ways but, unlike Eliza, also displays a fondness for a fast horse and a lively tune. With their children, they must negotiate their way through a world that constantly confronts them-sometimes with candor, sometimes with violence-and tests the strength of their beliefs. Whether it's a gift parcel arriving on their doorstep or Confederate soldiers approaching their land, the Birdwells embrace life with emotion, conviction, and a love for one another that seems to conquer all. The Friendly Persuasion has charmed generations of readers as one of our classic tales of the American Midwest.