. Fortune’s Rocks (1999) – Anita Shreve Free Audiobook

Written by Anita Shreve
Format: MP3

of the century – the 20th century, that is – the story concerns Olympia Biddleford, well-born daughter of an erudite, if rather cold father. The precocious Olympia is the kind of girl who might then have been called high-spirited: She has her own opinions about history and literature, for example, and isn’t shy about expressing them – at least within the safety of her family. But Olympia is also high-spirited and provocative in other, more dangerous ways – most notably when she embarks on a sexual relationship with John Haskell, one of her father’s friends (and 30 years her senior!). Nothing goodwillcome of this, Olympia and the reader both know from the outset; it doesn’t take long – just about a third of the novel, in fact – for this foreboding to be proved right. The lovers are soon discovered, and their lives are torn asunder. Haskell’s wife leaves him, the Biddlefords’ reputation is seriously besmirched, and Olympia is sent by her omnipotent father to a school “out west.”

But the story hardly ends there. Olivia, it turns out, is pregnant with Haskell’s child, and though in a drugged postpartum state she allows her son to be taken from her, she soon returns to Fortune’s Rocks intent on reclaiming him.