The Moonflower Vine: A Novel (P.S.)

A timeless American classic rediscovered—an unforgettable saga of a heartland family

On a farm in western Missouri during the first half of the twentieth century, Matthew and Callie Soames create a life for themselves and raise four headstrong daughters. Jessica will break their hearts. Leonie will fall in love with the wrong man. Mary Jo will escape to New York. And wild child Mathy's fate will be the family's greatest tragedy. Over the decades they will love, deceive, comfort, forgive—and, ultimately, they will come to cherish all the more fiercely the bonds of love that hold the family together.

Customer Reviews:

Like the flower in its title, this book is a perennial.

By bethanyreid@msn.com - March 24, 1998

I read this book as a teenager -- as a Reader's Digest Condensed Book in the 60's -- and never forgot it. In about 1990 I found it in a library and read the full novel. The Moonflower Vine is an exquisite portrait of a rural family and the forces that both bind them together and push them apart. Matthew Soames is a farmer/schoolteacher who wants to live in more than one world. His wife Callie is content with the life Matthew has put her in, even content to remain illiterate in the face of his constant studies. They and their four highly individualistic daughters (including one who flies off with an early, amateur aviator) each have a story to tell, and a secret to keep. In today's age of "tell all" there is something both guilty and immensely pleasurable about keeping this secret with them. The plot is not, however, contrived. Carleton's style is plain, in some ways. At the same time, it offers more: you sit down to a meal of meat-and-potatoes prose; then the... read more

My absolute favorite book of all time!

By marmalade@bulkdist.com - August 27, 1999

I first read "The Moonflower Vine" in the summer of 1972, when I would put my children to bed for their naps. It has become my ritual every summer to reread this book. I not only feel that I know these characters personally, but the story reminds me of a simpler time when I spent my afternoons tending my garden and reading and watching my children play in the sun. I would love to have Jetta Carleton's gift. She has said what so many of us wish we could say about our families - "...all the days that we had spent here together. What was I going to do when such days came no more?" I had no idea that copies of this book were so hard to come by. I will now treasure it even more. If you can find it, and have not read it, please do so. Then plant some moonflowers of your own. You'll never forget this story.