THE LITTLE GIANTS OF ABERDEEN COUNTY / Giveaway
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County
When Truly Plaice’s mother was pregnant, the town of Aberdeen joined together in betting how recordbreakingly huge the baby boy would ultimately be. The girl who proved to be Truly paid the price of her enormity; her father blamed her for her mother’s death in childbirth, and was totally ill equipped to raise either this giant child or her polar opposite sister Serena Jane, the epitome of femine perfection. When he, too, relinquished his increasingly tenuous grip on life, Truly and Serena Jane are separated–Serena Jane to live a life of privilege as the future May Queen and Truly to live on the outskirts of town on the farm of the town sadsack, the subject of constant abuse and humiliation at the hands of her peers.
Serena Jane’s beauty proves to be her greatest blessing and her biggest curse, for it makes her the obsession of classmate Bob Bob Morgan, the youngest in a line of Robert Morgans who have been doctors in Aberdeen for generations. Though they have long been the pillars of the community, the earliest Robert Morgan married the town witch, Tabitha Dyerson, and the location of her fabled shadow book–containing mysterious secrets for healing and darker powers–has been the subject of town gossip ever since. Bob Bob Morgan, one of Truly’s biggest tormentors, does the unthinkable to claim the prize of Serena Jane, and changes the destiny of all Aberdeen from there on.
When Serena Jane flees town and a loveless marriage to Bob Bob, it is Truly who must become the woman of a house that she did not choose and mother to her eight-year-old nephew Bobbie. Truly’s brother-in-law is relentless and brutal; he criticizes her physique and the limitations of her health as a result, and degrades her more than any one human could bear. It is only when Truly finds her calling–the ability to heal illness with herbs and naturopathic techniques–hidden within the folds of Robert Morgan’s family quilt, that she begins to regain control over her life and herself. Unearthed family secrets, however, will lead to the kind of betrayal that eventually break the Morgan family apart forever, but Truly’s reckoning with her own demons allows for both an uprooting of Aberdeen County, and the possibility of love in unexpected places.
Tiffany Baker lives in Tiburon, California, with her husband and three children. She was an English major at Denison University, and later earned a graduate degree in creative writing from UC Irvine and a PhD in Victorian literature. She is currently working on her second novel, due out in 2011.
1. Truly is the “little giant” of this book, yet her size seems to make her less, rather than more, visible to the town around her. Can you explain this phenomenon? What do you think the author is trying to say about her outsider status?
2. Serena Jane and Truly are as physically different as sisters can be, yet Truly sees that this difference is crucial, explaining “the reason the two of us were as opposite as sewage and spring water, I thought, was that pretty can’t exist without ugly.” (pp. 97-98) How would you describe Truly and Serena’s connection? How is it different from Truly’s relationship with Amelia Dyerson? Which seems the more genuine sisterhood to you?
3. As the successor to a long line of old-fashioned, small-town doctors, Robert Morgan is traditional, strict, and often cruel. I the end, however, the legacy terminates with him and he becomes Aberdeen’s last Dr. Morgan. How do he and Bobbie stray from the family paradigm? What Morgan characteristics stayed with each of them? Is the town “more modern” without a Dr. Morgan, and with Bobbie and Salvatore’s restaurant instead? Is the replacement of nurturing through nourishment rather than doctoring a symbolic replacement?
4. Death haunts Truly and all of Aberdeen, sometimes in unexpected ways. As a gardener, Marcus’s aim is to “make things live,” but, as Truly realizes, “wasn’t it also true that gardeners were always wrestling with death, whether in the form of drought, or blight, or hungry insects? In a garden, Marcus always said, death was the first, last and only fact of life.” What other parallels do you see in the ways Marcus and Truly court life and death?
5. Truly’s size marks her as an outcast, but throughout the novel, other characters have trouble “fitting in” in a more figurative way. Examine how this manifests in Bobbie, Marcus, Amelia, even Serena Jane. What larger point do you this the author might be trying to make about the importance of conforming?
6. What role does Aberdeen County play in the novel? Could the story or these characters exist elsewhere? Do the effects of the 60s and the Vietnam War seem to touch Aberdeen in the same way they touched the rest of the country? What is unique and what is not about Aberdeen as a setting?
7. When Amelia discovers how Priscilla Sparrow and Robert Morgan died, she asks Truly whether it was mercy or murder that killed them. What do you think? How do you feel about Truly’s actions? What in Truly’s character draws her to “collect souls” as she comes to call it?
8. When Marcus and Truly finally come together, Marcus says “We’re not exactly a match made in heaven, you and I, but I figure we’re good enough for here on earth” (p. 334) What does he mean by this? Do you agree?
9. Why doesn’t Robert Morgan “care” that his son runs away? What does it say about what he thinks of himself? How does this connect to Serena Jane’s leaving and his reaction to that event?
10. After Robert Morgan’s death, Truly gradually takes on some of his responsibilities as town doctor by using the knowledge she’s gained from Tabitha’s quilt. How is this a fitting purpose for Truly, and a fitting counterpoint to the legacy of Morgan doctors?
11. What about this story is larger than life or possesses elements of a tall tale or folklore? How are these details woven into the story? How is the book similar to or different from other works in this tradition?
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Thanks to Valerie and Hachette
I have 3 copies to give away.
Here ar
e the Rules:
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Mandatory entry: Leave a comment telling me how big your biggest
baby was – if you don’t have children – just say HEY!
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Tuesday March 9th
Good Luck & Good Reading
Hey!
thank you
kaiminani at gmail dot com
I have been a follower for quite a while.
thank you
kaiminani at gmail dot com
I have been a follower for quite a while.
thank you
kaiminani at gmail dot com
I don't have a baby, but my godson was a preemie who weighed exactly three pounds when he was born. Does that count?
I subscribe to your RSS feed.
No children here, so just saying hey! 🙂
I don't have children so–HEY!
Please enter me!
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My son was biggest but still only average at 7lbs 1oz.
freda.mans[at]sympatico.ca
+2 already follow publicly
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+3 Button is on blog; http://fredamans.blogspot.com/
freda.mans[at]sympatico.ca
My biggest was 9 lbs 4 oz!
I would love to be entered in your draw. Thanks.
wandanamgreb(at)gmail(dot)com
I am already a follower of your blog (Wanda Bergman). wandanamgreb(at)gmail(dot)com
My second baby was the biggest one. He weighed seven lbs. Too cute, a boy.
teakettle58atyahoodotcom
I'm Tea. I follow you.
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+3 I have your button on my blog. It's not in the sidebar. It's where the book reviews are and just above Sunbonnet Sue.
I changed the location. I have your button in my sidebar.
I blogged about the giveaway. http://readwithtea.blogspot.com
Please count me in. My biggest baby was 8 lbs 8 oz. Not too big.
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I follow on GFC.
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Hey.
janie1215 AT excite DOT com
I'm already a follower.
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My biggest baby was 7 lbs 10 oz, and that was big enough for me!
Please count me in for this giveaway, I would love to read this book.
alongtheway at telus dot net
+ 2 I am a follower
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HEY
karenk
kmkuka(at)yahoo(dot)Com
Hey! No baby over here!
Thanks for the giveaway!
leenbeen2001 (At) yahoo (dot) com
I am an old follower
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Hey!
bgcchs(at)yahoo(dot)com
+2 I am an old follower.
bgcchs(at)yahoo(dot)com
My oldest was 8 pounds and 12 ounces
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I just have the one, and he was 6 pounds, four and a half ounces. 🙂
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+2, I all ready follow. 🙂
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My daughter was 8 lbs 11 oz.
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I am a new follower
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She was only 7 lb 3 oz, but she was the biggest.
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I am a follower. [email protected]
Hey!
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9 lbs. 1 oz.
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I am a follower.
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My third child was my largest baby at 7 pounds 6 ounces.
traymona[at]aol.com
don't have kids yet.. but my doggie is 17 pounds, she's like my baby 🙂 LOL
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follower!
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button on blog- sexywomenread.blogspot.com
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My biggest baby was 8lbs 14oz.
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I follow you on GFC as couponmom (1)
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My sons weighed only a slight amount differently!
They were the same length and their weights were
7 lbs. 8oz and 7 lbs. 8 1/2 oz.
Thanks, Cindi
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I follow your blog publicly via Google Friend
Connect…..
Thanks, Cindi
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Hey! I have no children (without fur, that is) but I would love to win this book!
skkorman AT bellsouth DOT net
My biggest baby was 8lbs 13 1/2 oz cardshark42(at)hotmail(dot)com
I follow through google friend. cardshark42(at)hotmail(dot)com
My largest was 9 lb 2 oz.
rsgrandinetti@yahoo(dot)com
My biggest was 7lbs 10oz
dftrew(at)gmail(dot)com
+2 I was already a follower
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My largest baby was a boy who was 8lbs. 11oz. He was the largest baby in both my and my husbands family, 24 inches long.
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I am an old follower on GFC.
+2
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HEY!
Thanks for the opportunity to read this book!
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I already follow in GFC
#1
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I already follow in GFC
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