Gone the Hard Road
A Memoir
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Gone the Hard Road
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Narrated by:
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Danny Campbell
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By:
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Lee Martin
About this listen
"Count your blessings", his mother told him, "Think of everything good in your life."
Pulitzer Prize finalist Lee Martin has done it again. Building from his acclaimed first memoir, From Our House, which recounts the farming accident that cost his father both his hands, Gone the Hard Road is the story of Beulah Martin's endurance and sacrifice as a mother, and the gift of imagination she offered her son. Martin unfolds the world she created for him within their unsettled family life, from the first time she read to him in a doctor's office waiting room, to enrolling him in a children's book club, to the books she bought him in high school. Gone the Hard Road portrays Beulah's selflessness as the family moved around the Midwest, sometimes in the face of her husband's opposition, to show her son a different way of being. Rather than concentrate on the life his father threatened to destroy, as Martin's previous memoirs do, Gone the Hard Road offers the counternarrative of a loving mother and the creative life she made possible, in spite of the eventual cost to herself.
Poignant, honest, and moving, Gone the Hard Road will stay with anyone who has ever struggled to find their place in the world.
©2021 Lee Martin (P)2021 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 371
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 332
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Story4 out of 5 stars 332
When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
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1 out of 5 stars
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Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- By: Maya Angelou
- Narrated by: Maya Angelou
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 9,511
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 8,371
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 8,338
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age - and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. But years later, she learns about love for herself and the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Emotional & Powerful
- By Miss Toni on 06-30-13
By: Maya Angelou
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To See the Moon Again
- By: Jamie Langston Turner
- Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
The first step to letting go of the past is forgiving it …Every day of her life Julia Rich lives with the memory of a horrible accident she caused long ago. In the years since, she has tried to hide her guilt in the quiet routine of teaching at a small South Carolina college, avoiding close relationships with family and would-be friends. But one day a phone call from Carmen, a niece she has never met, disrupts her carefully controlled world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful Story of Forgiveness and Selfless Love
- By sharon on 09-20-14
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The Dark Side of Innocence
- Growing Up Bipolar
- By: Terri Cheney
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story5 out of 5 stars 32
The New York Times best-selling author blends a pitch-perfect childlike voice with keen adult observation as she shares her heartrending, groundbreaking insider's look into the fascinating and frightening world of childhood bipolar disorder.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Eye opening
- By Anonymous User on 03-13-23
By: Terri Cheney
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June Bug
- By: Chris Fabry
- Narrated by: Chris Fabry
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 195
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 170
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Story5 out of 5 stars 172
For as long as she can remember, June Bug and her father have traveled the back roads of the country in their beat-up RV, spending many nights parked at Walmart. One morning, as she walks past the greeter at the front of the store, her eyes are drawn to the pictures of missing children, where she is shocked to see herself. This discovery begins a quest for the truth about her father, the mother he rarely speaks about, and ultimately herself.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Get Out The Box Of Tissues
- By 20eagle16 on 07-03-21
By: Chris Fabry
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As I Knew Him
- My Dad, Rod Serling
- By: Anne Serling
- Narrated by: Anne Serling
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 128
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 115
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 115
To Anne Serling, the imposing figure the public saw hosting The Twilight Zone each week, intoning cautionary observations about fate, chance, and humanity, was not the father she knew. Her fun-loving dad would play on the floor with the dogs, had nicknames for everyone in the family, and was apt to put a lampshade on his head and break out in song. He was her best friend, her playmate, and her confidant. After his unexpected death at 50, Anne, just 20, was left stunned.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Beautiful Tribute to a Wonderful Man
- By Becky on 04-12-20
By: Anne Serling
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He Came in with It
- A Portrait of Motherhood and Madness
- By: Miriam Feldman
- Narrated by: Ann Richardson
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 56
In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O’Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens off the conventional course. Like the 10 Biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another: violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning - even cancer and a brain tumor - play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal.
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5 out of 5 stars
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So Beautifully Written
- By Michael on 08-01-22
By: Miriam Feldman
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Ordinary Light
- A Memoir
- By: Tracy K. Smith
- Narrated by: Tracy K. Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 182
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 163
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Story4 out of 5 stars 162
Tracy K. Smith has a fairly typical upbringing in suburban California: the youngest in a family of five children raised with limitless affection and a firm belief in God by a stay-at-home mother and an engineer father. But after spending a summer in Alabama at her grandmother's home, she returns to California with a new sense of what it means for her to be Black: from her mother's memories of picking cotton as a girl in her father's field for pennies a bushel to her parents' involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Simply spoken - poetic
- By CarolynneRHarris on 04-27-15
By: Tracy K. Smith
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A Prayer for Owen Meany
- By: John Irving
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 27 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 10,779
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 8,966
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 8,954
Of all of John Irving's books, this is the one that lends itself best to audio. In print, Owen Meany's dialogue is set in capital letters; for this production, Irving himself selected Joe Barrett to deliver Meany's difficult voice as intended. In the summer of 1953, two 11-year-old boys – best friends – are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is extraordinary and terrifying.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Outstanding
- By Alan on 03-28-11
By: John Irving
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Pale Horse, Pale Rider
- Three Short Novels
- By: Katherine Anne Porter
- Narrated by: Chelsea Stephens
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4 out of 5 stars 56
The classic 1939 collection of three novellas by the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author and journalist, including the famous title story set during the influenza epidemic of 1918.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Some of the most brilliant prose ever written
- By Anonymous User on 03-21-23
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Black Sunday
- A Novel
- By: Tola Rotimi Abraham
- Narrated by: Liz Femi, Dele Ogundiran, Miebaka Yohannes, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4 out of 5 stars 38
Twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike are enjoying a relatively comfortable life in Lagos in 1996. Then their mother loses her job due to political strife, and the family, facing poverty, is drawn into the New Church, an institution led by a charismatic pastor who is not shy about worshipping earthly wealth. Soon Bibike and Ariyike's father wagers the family home on a sure bet that evaporates like smoke.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Good Story - Awful accents
- By Tamara C-J on 02-15-21
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One True Thing
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Christina Moore
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 579
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 464
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 464
A young woman sits in jail, accused of the mercy killing of her dying mother. She didn't do it, but she thinks she knows who did. In the last months of her life, Ellen Gulden's mother revealed startling secrets that challenged everything Ellen believed about her family. Now, in jail, Ellen believes those secrets will tell her who had the courage to end her mother's suffering.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Quindlen's writing skills shine in One True Thing.
- By Bonny on 08-26-13
By: Anna Quindlen
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The Shadow Lines
- By: Amitav Ghosh
- Narrated by: Raj Varma
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4 out of 5 stars 67
Opening in Calcutta in the 1960s, Ghosh’s radiant second novel follows two families - one English, one Bengali - as their lives intertwine in tragic and comic ways. The narrator, Indian-born and English educated, traces events back and forth in time, through years of Bengali partition and violence, observing the ways in which political events invade private lives.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Narrator Doesn't Know How to Pronounce
- By Amazon Customer on 08-27-11
By: Amitav Ghosh
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My Life as a Rat
- A Novel
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Sadie Alexandru
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 154
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 134
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Story4 out of 5 stars 134
My Life as a Rat follows Violet Rue Kerrigan, a young woman who looks back upon her life in exile from her family following her testimony, at age 12, concerning what she knew to be the racist murder of an African American boy by her older brothers. In a succession of vividly recalled episodes, Violet contemplates the circumstances of her life as the initially beloved youngest child of seven Kerrigan children who inadvertently “informs” on her brothers, setting into motion their arrests and convictions and her own long estrangement.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Heavy Topics & Satisfying Story
- By Oscar on 06-30-19
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Clara Callan
- By: Richard B. Wright
- Narrated by: Anne Twomey, Joanna P. Adler
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 96
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
Two sisters, small-town Ontario, 1934. Canadian author Richard Wright tells their story, from the ordinary to the extraoridinary with an eye for the commonplace and poignant sense of the larger undercurrents that change people's lives.
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5 out of 5 stars
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charming intimate refreshing
- By L on 09-10-04