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Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore

Literary fiction

Valentine

Debut

We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Elizabeth Wetmore, on your first book!

by Elizabeth Wetmore

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Quick take

A brutal crime divides the strong-willed women of a Texas oil town in this profoundly feminist account of survival.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Heavy_Read

    Heavy read

  • Illustrated icon, Slow_Build

    Slow build

  • Illustrated icon, Unlikeable_Narrator

    Unlikeable narrator

  • Illustrated icon, Graphic_Content

    Graphic violence

Synopsis

It’s February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom. While the town’s men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems to follow.

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. 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. When justice is evasive, the stage is set for a showdown with potentially devastating consequences.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Valentine.

Valentine

Gloria

Sunday morning begins out here in the oil patch, a few minutes before dawn, with a young roughneck stretched out and sleeping hard in his pickup truck. Shoulders pressed against the driver’s side door, boots propped up on the dashboard, he wears his cowboy hat pulled down far enough that the girl sitting outside on the dusty ground can see only his pale jaw. Freckled and nearly hairless, it is a face that will never need a daily shave, no matter how old he gets, but she is hoping he dies young.

Gloria Rami?rez holds herself perfectly still, she is a downed mesquite branch, a half-buried stone, and she imagines him facedown in the dust, lips and cheeks scoured by sand, his thirst relieved only by the blood in his mouth. When he startles and shifts roughly against the truck door, she holds her breath and watches his jaw clench, the muscle working bone against bone. The sight of him is a torment and she wishes again that his death will come soon, that it will be vicious and lonely, with nobody to grieve for him.

The sky turns purple in the east, then blue-black, then old-bucket slate. In a few minutes it will be stained orange and red, and if she looks, Gloria will see the land stretched tight beneath the sky, brown stitched to blue, same as always. It is a sky without end, and the best thing about West Texas, when you can remember to look at it. She will miss it when she goes. Because she can’t stay here, not after this.

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Why I love it

I discovered Valentine when a friend, who is a bookseller by trade, recommended it to me. From the beginning, I was drawn to the book’s setting: a western corner of my home state of Texas. I also immediately felt my heritage in this novel, even glimpsing my grandma Jenna—a homemaker who never graduated from college but taught me every constellation in the sky—in the women of Valentine. But you don’t have to be from Texas to fall in love with this stunning debut.

The story is told through five dynamic female voices. They, along with the rest of their town of Odessa, are grappling with a tragic act of violence against a young Hispanic girl. There’s the indomitable (and grumpy!) Corinne Shepherd, who is mourning the loss of her beloved husband. There’s her precocious 10-year-old neighbor, Debra Ann, who forms an unlikely friendship after her mom leaves. Then there are the other characters who make up this flinty cast of women who must forge alliances and create boundaries to survive in this dusty oil town. They are complicated, complex; flawed yet striving to be better for each other.

I was hooked from the heart-pounding first scene. I finished it in a single sitting. In a time when we all need an escape, this beautiful story of justice, redemption, grace, and strength will arrest and transport you.

Member ratings (14,373)

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Literary fiction
View all
Intermezzo
The Book of George
Real Americans
Wellness
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
The God of the Woods
Same As It Ever Was
Annie Bot
Bear
Mercury
True Biz
Family Happiness
The Husbands
The Lady Waiting
The Other Valley
Hard by a Great Forest
Good Material
The Bullet Swallower
Happy All the Time
Alice Sadie Celine
Let Us Descend
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Shark Heart
Transcendent Kingdom
Hello Beautiful
Dominicana
What's Mine and Yours
The Unsettled
Ask Again, Yes
Vladimir
Infinite Country
The Prophets
Normal People
The Verifiers
Salvage the Bones
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
I Have Some Questions for You
Black Buck
The History of Love
Age of Vice
Paper Names
The Light Pirate
The Secret History
The Kite Runner
Memorial
The Half Moon
Happiness Falls
The Gifted School
The Death of Vivek Oji
The Knockout Queen
Little Monsters
Yerba Buena
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Free Food for Millionaires
A Burning
The Mothers
The Water Dancer
Small Country
The Sympathizer
Fleishman Is in Trouble
Lot
An American Marriage
The Animators
The Mars Room
Exit West
White Fur
Woman No. 17
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Eat Only When You're Hungry
Rainbirds
A Ladder to the Sky
Golden Child
The Goldfinch
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
& Sons
The Association of Small Bombs
Lolly Willowes
All Grown Up
Marlena
Signal Fires
Someday, Maybe
Woman of Light
Marrying the Ketchups
The Shards