The Friendship (eBook)

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ● From the bestselling author of The Sisterhood, a riveting novel about the redemptive power of true friendship.

In nineteenth-century Alabama, a drama of love, fate, and will is played out amid the intellectual ferment and racial tensions that defined the era. Annie Sullivan, an inexperienced 20-year-old teacher, is invited to aid a sickly deaf-blind girl who is considered dumb, and whose parents contemplate sending to an insane asylum.

When the young teacher agrees to treat the child with her experimental "manual alphabet," she never expects that she will find solace in the friendship with the little girl. Only through facing her own inner demons can the gifted teacher begin to help her pupil.

In The Friendship, Caroline Dubois blends fact and fiction, atmosphere and suspense, to uncover the 50 years of tumultuous relationship between the most famous student-teacher pair who ever lived. This is an unforgettable story about the redemptive power of true friendship.

“Breathlessly exciting and heartbreaking by turns−an emotional and historical page-turner."−Huffington Post

"A compelling, page-turning narrative . . . Re-examines the life of history's greatest teacher from a fresh, psychological point of view.“ −Kirkus Reviews

“Painstakingly researched, beautifully hewn, compulsively readable . . . Not to be missed.“−Library Journal

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BOOK EXCERPT © All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission:


CHAPTER ONE

Agawam, Massachusetts, 1874

“Annie! Annie!”

Annie could hear her mother calling after her. But she did not care. Those lights from the school, across the field, enchanted her. She had visited the school before, but never had she seen it all lit up during the evening.

Annie’s mother, Alice, looked through the porch at her eight-year-old daughter running through the field. She sighed. She shouted, exclaiming to her husband Thomas who was sitting inside, “What will become of her?”

Thomas shrugged his shoulders and took another sip from the cheap wine bottle, “Oh, I’ll teach her a lesson when she returns.”

Four-year-old Jimmie made his way into the porch, limping due to his bad hip, “Mama, I want to go with Annie!”

Alice glared at him and he hurried to return into the cabin. Alice could hear baby Mary crying inside.

Thomas yelled, “Alice, are you coming? When is dinner ready? I’m starving!”

Alice looked at the field, at her daughter making her way in the distance toward the school. She was worried about her. With her bad eyes, it could be difficult for her to find her way back in the darkness. “Annie!” she screamed again, despite knowing Annie could no longer hear her, “Annie!”

Annie made her way through the wheat field. The blurry lights of the school guided her through the darkness. The wheat brushed her arms on both sides as she ran through the narrow path.

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END OF EXCERPT (To read further click on the book cover, where you can read more using the Look Inside Feature!)