Narrator Gary Furlong uses an Irish lilt to portray naïve Henry O'Toole Taylor, who, after confronting anti-Irish sentiment in New York, drifts south to Virginia. There, in 1848, he plies his blacksmithing trade at Jubilee Plantation, confronts slavery, and falls in love with an enslaved houseworker named Sarah. Narrator Chanté McCormick adopts a soft, melodic voice for Sarah, who must choose between service to her master and her love for Taylor. Maple, a bitter enslaved house servant and half-sister to Jubilee's master, is credibly portrayed with a soft Southern accent by Patryce Williams. Furlong, McCormick, and Williams capture scenes ranging from a secretive romance and daily household routines to graphic descriptions of brutality in the antebellum South.
Pub Date: 2022
Duration: 9 hrs, 15 mins
DD ISBN: 9781549166051
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
After her divorce, Roberta Jewett, with her three daughters, returns to Camden, Maine, to start a new life. Such an independent move in 1916 brings difficulties with her mother, her in-laws and the townspeople. Dukes's performance, while skillful, sometimes suffer in scenes of emotional content. His pace slows, and his reading acquires the peculiar emphasis of someone trying to get instructions across to a non-English-speaking person. The effect is disturbingly laughable. When he resumes his normal pace, the story revives and personalities emerge again, but the awkwardness remains as an odd interruption to Spencer's drama of pain and love, dispelling Dukes's carefully constructed characterizations.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 3 hrs
Publisher: Dove
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
A young Southern woman marries into an aristocratic Boston family and spends her summers at a vacation community on the Maine coast. Heavy-handed abridgment reduces this novel to an outline which denies the listener any character development. Judith Ivey offers stereotypical dialects which are discordant to a New Englander's ear. In her interpretation the Down East Mainers speak like thugs in raspy voices. Her presentation of a Boston accent is phonetically erratic and also spoken in gruff tones. The color and flavor of Maine are missing from this tasteless rendition.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 3 hrs
Publisher: Harper Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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