Written with the haunting emotional power of Elizabeth Strout and Barbara Kingsolver 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.Mercy is hard in a place like this . . .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.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. 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.
