—Nashville Tennessean
“An impressive first novel.”
—Orlando Sentinel
“A powerful and at times passionate accounting of a family’s secret history. With an imaginative, innovative structure, with fine, clear writing, with a deep sense of place, and with strongly developed characters well worth knowing, Christina Baker Kline has given us a memorable and suspenseful story.”
—George Garrett
“What makes Christina Baker Kline’s solid first novel, Sweet Water, go is Cassie’s persistent uncovering of family secrets…. Kline’s use of Cassie and Clyde as alternating narrators gives the story added dimension…. Our seeing events from different perspectives underscores what both women come to realize, as they get past stereotypes about each other: that ‘truth can be as brittle, as deceptive as colored glass.’… Filled with literary promise.”
—Newsday/Boston Globe
“A happy surprise…. The writing is quick, sure and competent, the work of an artist well in command of her craft. Sweet Water is expertly told, its narrative fast-paced and well-plotted. Kline nimbly manages a cast of many characters, each voice separate and distinct … and the end of the book leaves us wishing for more…. A great read. Don’t miss it.”
—Bangor Daily News
“It’s rare for a first novel to be so unbelievably compelling, but when I picked up Christina Baker Kline’s Sweet Water, I couldn’t put it down. And the strange thing is that everyone I loaned the book to had the same reaction.”
—Ellen Silva, WAMU Radio, Washington, D.C.
The past is never dead. It’s
not even past.
—WILLIAM FAULKNER
But in order to make you understand,
to give you my life, I must tell you a story—
and there are so many, and so many.
—VIRGINIA WOOLF,
THE WAVES
Copyright
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1993 by HarperCollins Publishers.
SWEET WATER. Copyright © 1993 by Christina Baker Kline.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-02076-5
FIRST HARPERPERENNIAL EDITION PUBLISHED 1994.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Kline, Christina Baker, 1964-
Sweet water/Christina Baker Kline.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“Aaron Asher books.”
ISBN 0-06-019033-7
I. Title.
PS3561.L478S93 1993
813′.54—dc20 92-54717
ISBN 0-06-099513-0 (pbk.)
94 95 96 97 98 /CW 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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