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US Mall 1 - Serena: A Novel
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List Price: $24.99
Our Price: $14.89
Your Save: $ 10.10 ( 40% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Ecco
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780061470851
ISBN: 0061470856
Label: Ecco
Manufacturer: Ecco
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: 2008-10-01
Publisher: Ecco
Release Date: 2008-10-07
Studio: Ecco
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Dark historical novel
Comment: "Serena" is the story of an ambitious young couple, George and Serena Pemberton, who run a logging camp In North Carolina in the late 1920s. When George brings his new wife home from Boston, he is greeted by the irate father of a local girl who is carrying his child. The Pembertons are impervious to the problems of anyone around them, and they are obsessive in their desires to achieve wealth and power through their logging business. Their greed and destruction of forests is in opposition to other characters in the book who are promoting the designation of the area as the Smoky Mountains National Park. The setting and the history surrounding the story were interesting to me but the characters were ruthless and didn't seem to have many redeeming qualities, a factor which caused me to lower my review to 3 stars.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Super villians
Comment: I recieved this book as a gift so it was not something I probably would have picked except that I like to read local authors. From the first page, the violence and the extreme characters were over the top for me. I didn't learn very much history about the park but the logging information is very detailed and informative.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Vilest Female Villian Since Cathy Trask In East of Eden
Comment: This dark tale set in an Appalachian logging camp during the depression is the story of a mad woman's obsession. Even after reading the book I am not sure whether the obsession is for money, or power, or what, but Serena is clearly a driven woman unfettered by common morality or sentiment. In the annals of ruthlessness, she deserves an honored place.
The book chronicles Serena's marriage to Pemberton, who she always calls by his last name. Pemberton is a lumber baron who lets nothing stand in the way of his logging. Serena comes from someplace out west where she learned the lumber business. She finds Pemberton, marries him and becomes his business partner. Her past is obscure but past doesn't matter for Serena. She observes of her father that he is of no consequence because he is dead now.
One of my favorite parts of the novel was a literary device. The logging camp has a group of loggers who regularly take breaks from their work and discuss religion, politics and the goings on with Serena and Pemberton. They make up a depression age Greek chorus to comment upon the protagonists as the plot unfolds and it is one of the more entertaining aspects of the book.
The starkness of this simple plot contrasts with the rich descriptions of life and death in the logging camps during the depression. Serena and Pemberton battle the elements, their partners, and an incipient conservationist movement along the way. Morality falls before the power of madness, making for dark and entertaining read right up to the end.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wow! a 2008 Top Ten
Comment: This book is one of my personal top ten reads for 2008. There are enough reviews here to get the gist of the story, but the story itself, of the timber industry in the highlands of North Carolina, is only the backdrop for issues of love, betrayal, greed, selflessness and selfishness. Ron Rash has created some of the most fascinating characters I have encountered for a long time. If I could rate higher than five stars, I would!
Customer Rating:
Summary: mmcdonald`
Comment: In "Serena" the author's words mean something, everything; they are not wasted. Descriptions of the surroundings, the woods, the harsh environment, all tie into the life led by the woodsmen and Serena and George. Serena herself seems to embody this environment. Juxtaposed is the sexual, sensual relationship between George and Serena. She is the agressor, the hunter, the animalistic person, while George is mesmerized. Is he perhaps living his life through her, unable to be the man he thinks he should, based on the culture of the harsh reality in which he lives? The unborn child, to Serena, is another possession, a legacy, and when lost, like the woods they could not buy, anger is her response. Unable to purchase the timberland, Serena and George look elsewhere, not only in the state, but in Brazil, where Serena has a dream of striking it rich. When Serena loses her unborn to miscarriage, she transfers her rage to George's son, Jacob. Failure is not Serena's way. If she can not own it, than she will destroy it. Ironically, what Serena does with all her "possessions is to destroy them.
The book had multiple levels: a woman who fails to birth and raise a child; a woman who is ahead of her time in a man's world, a woman who has a failure of a moral compassion. George is not quite her equal and her contempt for his weakness, as she saw it, leads to a tragic end.
Mr. Rash's description of the leveling of the land for timber makes an environmentalist cringe; the word rape came to me mind while reading. Pull out the logs, slash and burn, no consideration for the workers, all in the the name of profit. Thus, as a sideline, this book describes the workings of a small lumber operation and how so much of the countryside, in the past, became denuded, losing creeks, rivers, fish, and creating mud slides and major landscape changes.
Few books have gripped me from beginning to end, but this is one of them. After I read this, I read "One Foot in Eden," Mr. Rash's earlier novel, and one can definitely see his growth in writing. "Eden", while good, did not have the tenor and pace of this book. However, I do recommend it.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Dark historical novel
Comment: "Serena" is the story of an ambitious young couple, George and Serena Pemberton, who run a logging camp In North Carolina in the late 1920s. When George brings his new wife home from Boston, he is greeted by the irate father of a local girl who is carrying his child. The Pembertons are impervious to the problems of anyone around them, and they are obsessive in their desires to achieve wealth and power through their logging business. Their greed and destruction of forests is in opposition to other characters in the book who are promoting the designation of the area as the Smoky Mountains National Park. The setting and the history surrounding the story were interesting to me but the characters were ruthless and didn't seem to have many redeeming qualities, a factor which caused me to lower my review to 3 stars.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Super villians
Comment: I recieved this book as a gift so it was not something I probably would have picked except that I like to read local authors. From the first page, the violence and the extreme characters were over the top for me. I didn't learn very much history about the park but the logging information is very detailed and informative.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Vilest Female Villian Since Cathy Trask In East of Eden
Comment: This dark tale set in an Appalachian logging camp during the depression is the story of a mad woman's obsession. Even after reading the book I am not sure whether the obsession is for money, or power, or what, but Serena is clearly a driven woman unfettered by common morality or sentiment. In the annals of ruthlessness, she deserves an honored place.
The book chronicles Serena's marriage to Pemberton, who she always calls by his last name. Pemberton is a lumber baron who lets nothing stand in the way of his logging. Serena comes from someplace out west where she learned the lumber business. She finds Pemberton, marries him and becomes his business partner. Her past is obscure but past doesn't matter for Serena. She observes of her father that he is of no consequence because he is dead now.
One of my favorite parts of the novel was a literary device. The logging camp has a group of loggers who regularly take breaks from their work and discuss religion, politics and the goings on with Serena and Pemberton. They make up a depression age Greek chorus to comment upon the protagonists as the plot unfolds and it is one of the more entertaining aspects of the book.
The starkness of this simple plot contrasts with the rich descriptions of life and death in the logging camps during the depression. Serena and Pemberton battle the elements, their partners, and an incipient conservationist movement along the way. Morality falls before the power of madness, making for dark and entertaining read right up to the end.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wow! a 2008 Top Ten
Comment: This book is one of my personal top ten reads for 2008. There are enough reviews here to get the gist of the story, but the story itself, of the timber industry in the highlands of North Carolina, is only the backdrop for issues of love, betrayal, greed, selflessness and selfishness. Ron Rash has created some of the most fascinating characters I have encountered for a long time. If I could rate higher than five stars, I would!
Customer Rating:
Summary: mmcdonald`
Comment: In "Serena" the author's words mean something, everything; they are not wasted. Descriptions of the surroundings, the woods, the harsh environment, all tie into the life led by the woodsmen and Serena and George. Serena herself seems to embody this environment. Juxtaposed is the sexual, sensual relationship between George and Serena. She is the agressor, the hunter, the animalistic person, while George is mesmerized. Is he perhaps living his life through her, unable to be the man he thinks he should, based on the culture of the harsh reality in which he lives? The unborn child, to Serena, is another possession, a legacy, and when lost, like the woods they could not buy, anger is her response. Unable to purchase the timberland, Serena and George look elsewhere, not only in the state, but in Brazil, where Serena has a dream of striking it rich. When Serena loses her unborn to miscarriage, she transfers her rage to George's son, Jacob. Failure is not Serena's way. If she can not own it, than she will destroy it. Ironically, what Serena does with all her "possessions is to destroy them.
The book had multiple levels: a woman who fails to birth and raise a child; a woman who is ahead of her time in a man's world, a woman who has a failure of a moral compassion. George is not quite her equal and her contempt for his weakness, as she saw it, leads to a tragic end.
Mr. Rash's description of the leveling of the land for timber makes an environmentalist cringe; the word rape came to me mind while reading. Pull out the logs, slash and burn, no consideration for the workers, all in the the name of profit. Thus, as a sideline, this book describes the workings of a small lumber operation and how so much of the countryside, in the past, became denuded, losing creeks, rivers, fish, and creating mud slides and major landscape changes.
Few books have gripped me from beginning to end, but this is one of them. After I read this, I read "One Foot in Eden," Mr. Rash's earlier novel, and one can definitely see his growth in writing. "Eden", while good, did not have the tenor and pace of this book. However, I do recommend it.
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