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    In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden
    In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden
    In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden
    Audiobook10 hours

    In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden

    Written by Kathleen Cambor

    Narrated by James Daniels

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    An Elegantly Crafted Love Story Set in Post-Civil War America

    In Sunlight, In a Beautiful Garden tells of a bittersweet romance set against the backdrop of the greatest industrial disaster in American history: the construction and subsequent collapse in 1889 of the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, dam. It was a tragedy that cost 2,200 lives, implicated some of the most illustrious financiers of the day - Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Mellon - whose carelessness contributed to the disaster, and irreparably changed the lives of those who survived it.

    This is the story of these men and of the families who lived in the shadow of the dam: the daughter of the lawyer who filed the charter for an exclusive club on the shore of the artificially created lake; the Quaker steel mill owner who tried to stop the dam's construction; a librarian, escaping to a bustling mountain city from a loveless life in Boston; a young man determined to expose and undermine the greed and carelessness that shaped the last years of the nineteenth century.

    A cautionary tale for our new century, In Sunlight, In a Beautiful Garden is a story of youthful promise and devastating loss, of power and its misuse, and of greed and the philanthropy that is too often a guilty by-product.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateAug 25, 2005
    ISBN9781596007147
    In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden
    Author

    Kathleen Cambor

    Kathleen Cambor is a PEN/Faulkner nominee and author of The Book of Mercy (1996). She is the director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston and lives in Houston with her husband.

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    Reviews for In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden

    3.5/5

    88 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A beautifully told historical fiction set in 1889 in Johnstown, PA. This memorial day weekend will change the lives of all the town's inhabitants forever. Follow the author as she traces an intimate portrait of love and tragedy. Her evocative telling captures the reader. You will join with the mourners as numerous bright lives are snuffed out together.
    • 3/5
      The novel deals with the Johnstown flood. It's in interesting historical setting and our book club spent some time discussing the class differences (and how / whether they still exist in today's America). It is a love story of sorts, set in the time leading to the Johnstown flood of 1889. A privileged girl comes to love the son of the steel works foreman. But, of course, their relationship is doomed. Some insight into the historical figures of Carnegie, Mellon and Frick. I did not like the epilogue.
    • 2/5
      Cambor very meticulously draws the background of key players in "In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden." So meticulously, in fact, that I began to lose track of the large number of characters and, then, lose interest.
    • 2/5
      This is a historical novel about the flood in Johnstown, Penn in 1889. Some of the characters are taken from history, some are invented. The author does a good job of maintaining a sense of foreboding.

      The characters are all dealing with their relationship to the greater society, and the flood too was caused by the tension between the rich club members, who owned the dam, and the people who lived below it. The author investigates both the social and the natural forces, and does it quite poetically.

      This wasn't quite as dramatic as I was expecting. But it's worth reading.
    • 4/5
      When I first started reading this book I will admit to being disappointed because for some reason I thought it was just about the flood and the causes of the flood. After a short while though, the author had drawn me in with this well written story about the families and lives of the people affected by this tragedy. Rich men, Carnegie and Mellon only concerned about their gentleman's club, ignoring warnings from engineers that the dam was very inadequate, showing once again the abuse of power and money. When the flood finally entered the book, it was even more of a shock because now I had connected to many of the characters. Cambor did a wonderful job highlighting the effects of this tragedy on all involved, while also updating the reader on other world events connected with World War II.
    • 3/5
      The author's research on the people of Johnstown, the "robber barons" of Pittsburgh who created the South Fork club, and the flood itself are evident, there is just too much here. There are numerous superfluous stories and tid bits throughout the book. It also at times is way too modern and unrealistic. And it's slow. However, the parts I liked which account for probably 60% of the book, are good.
    • 5/5
      It's been on my shelf for years, and I finally read it in conjunction with a visit to the Johnstown Flood Museum. It's a terrific piece of historical fiction which gives a real sense of the time and the Pittsburgh magnates involved (Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon).
    • 4/5
      I liked the book because of its use of language. The book opens with the day of the flood and takes you character by character through periods of time prior to the aweful day. It focuses very little on the flood itself. In the end, you are left feeling like you want to know more.
    • 4/5
      This novel has, as its background the Johnstown Pa flood. Although we are introduced to the characters before the event, we, the readers, know & the characters have no idea what is about to happen to them. That is one of the challanges of writing historical fiction. How much can be foreshadowed when the readers are all familiar with the story. And how to make each character special so that the reader will really care what happens to him or her? Kathleen Cambor does a good job with her characters. She also creates a believable setting. As the title suggests, the mountain-top gentlemen's club which failed to maintain its dam, was a beautiful place where the beautiful people at the end of the 19th century gathered. And into that beauty came disaster. Not to the club & its members, but to the residents of the town below.Besides telling a good story, In Sunlight, in a beautiful Garden gives a very down-to-earth example of the regard which the rich & powerful regarded the ordinary people of that time. (And other times, as well)