SERENDIPITOUS FRIDAYS: BOOK BEGINNINGS & THE FRIDAY 56 — JULY 13

Welcome to some serendipitous fun today as we share Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and as we showcase The Friday 56 with Freda’s Voice.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56 and excerpt anything on the page.

Then give us the title of the book, so others can add it to their lists!

Today I’m excerpting from The Roots of the Olive Tree, by Courtney Miller Santo. (From the ARC).

Meet the Keller family, five generations of firstborn women—an unbroken line of daughters—living together in the same house on a secluded olive grove in the Sacramento Valley of Northern California.

Anna, the family matriarch, is 112 and determined to become the oldest person in the world. An indomitable force, strong in mind and firm in body, she rules Hill House, the family home she shares with her daughter Bets, granddaughter Callie, great-granddaughter Deb, and great-great-granddaughter Erin. Though they lead ordinary lives, there is an element of the extraordinary to these women: the eldest two are defying longevity norms. Their unusual lifespans have caught the attention of a geneticist who believes they hold the key to breakthroughs that will revolutionize the aging process for everyone.

But Anna is not interested in unlocking secrets the Keller blood holds. She believes there are some truths that must stay hidden, including certain knowledge about her origins that she has carried for more than a century. Like Anna, each of the Keller women conceals her true self from the others. While they are bound by blood and the house they share, living together has not always been easy. And it is about to become more complicated now that Erin, the youngest, is back, alone and pregnant, after two years abroad with an opera company. Her return and the arrival of the geneticist who has come to study the Keller family ignites explosive emotions that these women have kept buried and uncovers revelations that will shake them all to their roots.

Told from varying viewpoints, Courtney Miller Santo’s compelling and evocative debut novel captures the joys and sorrows of family—the love, secrets, disappointments, jealousies, and forgiveness that tie generations to one another.

***

Beginning:  Anna Davison Keller wanted to be the oldest person in the world.  She felt she was owed this distinction, due to the particular care she’d taken with the vessel God had given her.  In her morning prayers, she made a show, in case God himself was watching, of getting out of bed and onto her knees.  She spoke to God in his language—asking for a length of days to be added to the one hundred and twelve years she’d already lived and pleading for health in her navel and marrow in her bones.

***

p. 56:  “You know what stinks?”  Anna asked, taking a seat next to her daughter.  “It’s the perspiration.  That’s what smells like rot.  I’ve attended enough deathbeds to know the smell of death, and that home you’ve got Frank in reeks of it.”

***

From these excerpts, I’m curious to learn more about the story that will unfold.

What about you?  What is grabbing your attention this morning?