The Beautiful Plain: A Novel: Flyover Fiction
Autor Jennifer Sinoren Limba Engleză Paperback – oct 2026
Rejected by her former husband and with her precocious child in tow, Laura returns to her hometown of Platte, Nebraska, to see if she can recover what was sent to the ground that summer afternoon long ago. Immersed in the unassuming beauty of the Great Plains and following a single year of one woman’s life, The Beautiful Plain invites the reader to reconsider where beauty and grace reside.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781496248039
ISBN-10: 1496248031
Pagini: 266
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 mm
Editura: Nebraska
Colecția University of Nebraska Press
Seria Flyover Fiction
Locul publicării:United States
ISBN-10: 1496248031
Pagini: 266
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 mm
Editura: Nebraska
Colecția University of Nebraska Press
Seria Flyover Fiction
Locul publicării:United States
Notă biografică
Jennifer Sinor is the author of several books, including The Yogic Writer: Uniting Breath, Body, and Page; Sky Songs: Meditations on Loving a Broken World (Nebraska, 2020); Letters Like the Day: On Reading Georgia O’Keeffe; and Ordinary Trauma: A Memoir. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays and The Norton Reader. She teaches creative writing at Utah State University, where she is a professor of English.
Extras
Chapter 1
Summer 1982
The cardboard box rested on a table barely three feet from the
ground, but there was no way for the girl inside to know that.
That’s why she was kicking dents into the sides, beating the
top with her fists. They had finally revealed to Kelly that they
had carried her to the loft of the Pierce barn to push her off. Of
course, this was after Kelly had voluntarily stepped into the box,
folded her skinny body into itself, and allowed them to duct tape
the box’s seams. She had even paused to smooth her blue skirt,
adjust the waistband, like she was sitting down to dinner at her
grandma’s. Amid the sweltering heat and the smell of quiet rot,
Laura remained focused on Kelly’s willingness to climb inside
the box; she had chosen.
“What about air holes?” Laura had asked when they first finished
sealing Kelly in. Sweat pooled in Laura’s armpits and ran
down the inside of her arm. It must have been ever hotter inside
the box. She thought of all those lightning bugs they captured
every June, how they diligently punched holes in the lid of the
Mason jar with a nail. Every time: legs up by morning. No matter
the number of holes. “I could find a hammer and nail.”
Throwing her empty roll of duct tape onto a work bench
crowded with tools, Carrie had responded that Kelly wouldn’t
be in there long enough to use all the air. “Plus,” she concluded,
“there are cracks.” When Laura looked to where Carrie
pointed—the few remaining pockets that had not been covered
in silver tape—she questioned the decision. She didn’t want to
unseal the box and find Kelly half dead, her fish-belly skin even
more pale.
“We should hurry then.”
But three twelve-year-old girls maneuvering the boxed weight
of another twelve-year- old, no matter how skinny her arms and
legs, proved much harder than they had anticipated. Not to
mention the need to haul the box up the stairs to the loft. For
the first twenty feet, Laura and Carrie and Julia just shoved the
box along the barn floor. Several times the box caught on an
uneven plank or a nail, and all three of them would slam into
the sides. In those moments, Laura thought she felt the body of
Kelly Spranger inside, but that seemed impossible. They had
found a box that had held bottles of liquid fertilizer for Mrs.
Pierce’s massive garden, and the sides were as sturdy as wood.
What she experienced in those moments of collision was simply
the pain of her nose upon contact, or her shoulder, or knee, or
simply the rude edge of their decision.
It had taken maybe fifteen minutes to manipulate the box to
the wooden stairs built into the side of the barn, fifteen minutes
of pushing and heaving the heavy box from the place where Kelly
had—Laura kept reminding herself—voluntarily
stepped inside. At the foot of the stairs, a chain hoist hung from a crossbeam
above them, the fat links simultaneously fluid and frozen. Old
rakes and pitchforks huddled against milking cans and broken
wagon wheels; a wooden ladder, painted white at one point,
leaned against the wall. By the time they arrived at the first step,
sweat slicked Laura’s temple and neck, pasted her T-shirt
to her back. She exhaled heat. Looking to her friend Carrie, whose
blonde hair still feathered along the sides of her face, clear skin
and pale eyes both dry and quiet, Laura wondered once again
if they should call it off.
Apparently less concerned, Julia picked hay from her brown
hair and then slumped to the ground near the box. “Barns suck,”
she said. “We should’ve done this somewhere else.” She dusted
her bare legs and then pulled her hair from her neck. “Or waited
for October. It’s way too hot.”
“I’m really hot too,” Kelly called from inside the box. “I want
out. This isn’t fun.”
In August the Nebraska sun showed no mercy. Anything not
irrigated withered. Even the Platte River ran thin like lace. When
they had told Kelly that today was her day for the initiation
into the Cecret Lucky Jackrabbits, Laura had expected Kelly
to arrive in shorts like the rest of them, flip-flops and tees. But
Kelly must have thought initiation meant some kind of formal
ceremony because she came to the Pierce barn—dropped off
by her mother waving madly from inside their air-conditioned
Cadillac—wearing layered skirts, lace-up ankle boots, and thick
socks scrunched with surgical precision. At first Laura had felt
sorry for Kelly. She knew that Julia and Carrie had no intention
of letting someone like Kelly Spranger join the cljs. When
they had formed the club in fourth grade, the three of them had
pledged never to allow another girl to become a member. At the
time they said it was because no one else could be trusted with
the secret chant and handshake and that no one in either of the
fourth-grade classrooms had Dorothy Hamill haircuts like their
own. Plus they would have to change the name. If someone like
Kelly joined it would have required renaming the club to the
Cecret Lucky Jackrabbit Kings. Or Killers. Or Kangaroos. It
was bad enough they spelled secret with a C for Carrie. They
couldn’t possibly find a K-word that would work and had already
painted the club’s name on the plywood plank that served as the
door to the lilac cove in Laura’s backyard.
At least, that’s what Laura told herself: that no one could
join because it would mess up the name. Mostly Laura readily
agreed with Carrie’s suggestion to never allow anyone else to
join because it secured Laura a place as an insider. The club’s
name depended on her membership.
Summer 1982
The cardboard box rested on a table barely three feet from the
ground, but there was no way for the girl inside to know that.
That’s why she was kicking dents into the sides, beating the
top with her fists. They had finally revealed to Kelly that they
had carried her to the loft of the Pierce barn to push her off. Of
course, this was after Kelly had voluntarily stepped into the box,
folded her skinny body into itself, and allowed them to duct tape
the box’s seams. She had even paused to smooth her blue skirt,
adjust the waistband, like she was sitting down to dinner at her
grandma’s. Amid the sweltering heat and the smell of quiet rot,
Laura remained focused on Kelly’s willingness to climb inside
the box; she had chosen.
“What about air holes?” Laura had asked when they first finished
sealing Kelly in. Sweat pooled in Laura’s armpits and ran
down the inside of her arm. It must have been ever hotter inside
the box. She thought of all those lightning bugs they captured
every June, how they diligently punched holes in the lid of the
Mason jar with a nail. Every time: legs up by morning. No matter
the number of holes. “I could find a hammer and nail.”
Throwing her empty roll of duct tape onto a work bench
crowded with tools, Carrie had responded that Kelly wouldn’t
be in there long enough to use all the air. “Plus,” she concluded,
“there are cracks.” When Laura looked to where Carrie
pointed—the few remaining pockets that had not been covered
in silver tape—she questioned the decision. She didn’t want to
unseal the box and find Kelly half dead, her fish-belly skin even
more pale.
“We should hurry then.”
But three twelve-year-old girls maneuvering the boxed weight
of another twelve-year- old, no matter how skinny her arms and
legs, proved much harder than they had anticipated. Not to
mention the need to haul the box up the stairs to the loft. For
the first twenty feet, Laura and Carrie and Julia just shoved the
box along the barn floor. Several times the box caught on an
uneven plank or a nail, and all three of them would slam into
the sides. In those moments, Laura thought she felt the body of
Kelly Spranger inside, but that seemed impossible. They had
found a box that had held bottles of liquid fertilizer for Mrs.
Pierce’s massive garden, and the sides were as sturdy as wood.
What she experienced in those moments of collision was simply
the pain of her nose upon contact, or her shoulder, or knee, or
simply the rude edge of their decision.
It had taken maybe fifteen minutes to manipulate the box to
the wooden stairs built into the side of the barn, fifteen minutes
of pushing and heaving the heavy box from the place where Kelly
had—Laura kept reminding herself—voluntarily
stepped inside. At the foot of the stairs, a chain hoist hung from a crossbeam
above them, the fat links simultaneously fluid and frozen. Old
rakes and pitchforks huddled against milking cans and broken
wagon wheels; a wooden ladder, painted white at one point,
leaned against the wall. By the time they arrived at the first step,
sweat slicked Laura’s temple and neck, pasted her T-shirt
to her back. She exhaled heat. Looking to her friend Carrie, whose
blonde hair still feathered along the sides of her face, clear skin
and pale eyes both dry and quiet, Laura wondered once again
if they should call it off.
Apparently less concerned, Julia picked hay from her brown
hair and then slumped to the ground near the box. “Barns suck,”
she said. “We should’ve done this somewhere else.” She dusted
her bare legs and then pulled her hair from her neck. “Or waited
for October. It’s way too hot.”
“I’m really hot too,” Kelly called from inside the box. “I want
out. This isn’t fun.”
In August the Nebraska sun showed no mercy. Anything not
irrigated withered. Even the Platte River ran thin like lace. When
they had told Kelly that today was her day for the initiation
into the Cecret Lucky Jackrabbits, Laura had expected Kelly
to arrive in shorts like the rest of them, flip-flops and tees. But
Kelly must have thought initiation meant some kind of formal
ceremony because she came to the Pierce barn—dropped off
by her mother waving madly from inside their air-conditioned
Cadillac—wearing layered skirts, lace-up ankle boots, and thick
socks scrunched with surgical precision. At first Laura had felt
sorry for Kelly. She knew that Julia and Carrie had no intention
of letting someone like Kelly Spranger join the cljs. When
they had formed the club in fourth grade, the three of them had
pledged never to allow another girl to become a member. At the
time they said it was because no one else could be trusted with
the secret chant and handshake and that no one in either of the
fourth-grade classrooms had Dorothy Hamill haircuts like their
own. Plus they would have to change the name. If someone like
Kelly joined it would have required renaming the club to the
Cecret Lucky Jackrabbit Kings. Or Killers. Or Kangaroos. It
was bad enough they spelled secret with a C for Carrie. They
couldn’t possibly find a K-word that would work and had already
painted the club’s name on the plywood plank that served as the
door to the lilac cove in Laura’s backyard.
At least, that’s what Laura told herself: that no one could
join because it would mess up the name. Mostly Laura readily
agreed with Carrie’s suggestion to never allow anyone else to
join because it secured Laura a place as an insider. The club’s
name depended on her membership.
Recenzii
“Jennifer Sinor’s big-hearted novel The Beautiful Plain movingly portrays a life haunted by guilt over an act of childhood cruelty, and the power of love to redeem the past.”—Ladette Randolph, author of Private Way, Haven’s Wake, and A Sandhills Ballad
“A study in guilt, grief, and reawakening, The Beautiful Plain examines the bifurcation that comes from the suppression of our shadow selves. Through fragmented recollections—ancestral diaries, personal memories, and traumatic stories of war—Jennifer Sinor interrogates what it means to know and not know, to see and not see, to blindly box ourselves in while the wild world goes on without us, as well as the courage and community it takes to turn and face the refining fire of our own agency.”—Kim Barnes, author of In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
“A study in guilt, grief, and reawakening, The Beautiful Plain examines the bifurcation that comes from the suppression of our shadow selves. Through fragmented recollections—ancestral diaries, personal memories, and traumatic stories of war—Jennifer Sinor interrogates what it means to know and not know, to see and not see, to blindly box ourselves in while the wild world goes on without us, as well as the courage and community it takes to turn and face the refining fire of our own agency.”—Kim Barnes, author of In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Descriere
This novel, immersed in the unassuming beauty of the Great Plains and following a single year of one woman’s life interwoven with her past, invites the reader to reconsider where beauty and grace reside.