Top

Sister Mine

On sale

10th January 2008

Price: £9.99

Selected:  Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780719556777

Disclosure: If you buy products using the retailer buttons above, we may earn a commission from the retailers you visit.

Set in the fictional mining town of Jolly Mount, Pennsylvania, Sister Mine is told in the wry, honest and sometimes heartbreakingly poignant voice of Shae-Lynn Penrose, an offbeat ex-cop and now sole proprietor of the local cab company. Two years previously, five of Shae-Lynn’s friends were catapulted into media stardom when the pit in which they were working exploded. They survived five days underground and emerged as heroes – but neither they nor their town have been the same since.

Still, things are fine – until Shae-Lynn’s kid sister Shannon, presumed dead, walks back into town. Where has she been for the last seventeen years? Who is the father of her unborn baby? And why is the mob on her heels? Shae-Lynn herself, beaten black and blue as a child by her brute of a miner father, has plenty of her own demons to confront – and one or two secrets she’s never told…

With all the heartache of Jodi Picoult, but served up with a blackly humorous twist and set in the sort of small working-class town that Karin Slaughter has made so familiar, Sister Mine is redemptive, embracing – and, above, all, unputdownable.

Reviews

Entertainment Weekly
PRAISE FOR COAL RUN 'Rich, compassionate story-telling...'
Los Angeles Times
'It's a pleasure to see such a gifted, ambitious writer reinvigorating the tradition of social conscience combined with personal passion that has illuminated some of the finest, most moving works in American literature'
New York Times Book Review
PRAISE FOR BACK ROADS 'Tense, conflicted and involving, O'Dell's novel deftly captures the voice of a teenage boy who's in trouble and facing profound challenges...'
New York Newsday
'O'Dell has tackled the real stuff of stories, and she's done it with compassion and a unique voice'
Los Angeles Times
'O'Dell's storytelling has natural flair'
L'Express, Paris
'In the finest tradition of Faulkner and Caldwell'
Le Monde
'A tough, outstanding novel...'