When Mary Rose lays eyes on the battered Gloria Ramirez, she sees the hard, cold truth about her environment, she fears for her daughter’s future, and knows that someone has to speak up for Gloria, that someone has to fight for her, because evidently, no one else will. In fact, I’m not sure my review could do this book justice. My instincts paid off- but this book was far more impressive than I had anticipated.
One, it was set in Texas in mid-seventies- in Odessa- and because I noticed how well it was received, and because I just had one of those feelings- like the book was calling me. However, once the immediate threat has passed, Mary Rose discovers the community is far from impressed by her act of courage and heroism.īecause the accused rapist is a well- connected young white man and Gloria is a Hispanic girl- Mary Rose’s non-conformity not only earns her sharp rebukes from other women she associates with, but she could be the target of revenge- especially since she refuses to let the matter die.Įventually, the boiling hot stew of racism, misogyny, injustice, fear, and stress, brings Mary Rose to the brink of madness… Mary Rose was home alone with her daughter, but bravely keeps Gloria safe with so small danger to herself.
Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore is a 2020 Harper publication.Īfter fourteen- year old Gloria Ramirez is beaten and raped, she escapes her attacker, finally making her way to the doorstep of Mary Rose Whitehead. Told through the alternating points of view of indelible characters who burrow deep in the reader’s heart, this fierce, unflinching, and surprisingly tender novel illuminates women’s strength and vulnerability, and reminds us that it is the stories we tell ourselves that keep us alive. Valentine is a haunting exploration of the intersections of violence and race, class and region in a story that plumbs the depths of darkness and fear, yet offers a window into beauty and hope.
When justice is evasive, the stage is set for a showdown with potentially devastating consequences. The teenager had been viciously attacked in a nearby oil field-an act of brutality that is tried in the churches and barrooms of Odessa before it can reach a court of law. In the early hours of the morning after Valentine’s Day, fourteen-year-old Gloria Ramírez appears on the front porch of Mary Rose Whitehead’s ranch house, broken and barely alive. While the town’s men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems to follow. It’s February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom. An astonishing debut novel that explores the lingering effects of a brutal crime on the women of one small Texas oil town in the 1970s.
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