Vinegar Hill Book Summary

In 'Vinegar Hill', A. Manette Ansay crafts a gritty tale of family strife and personal secrets against the backdrop of a small Midwestern town. The story follows the struggles of a mother, torn between her loyalty to her husband and her yearning for freedom, as dark memories resurface. With each page, readers are drawn deeper into the complexities of love and betrayal. As tensions rise and relationships fracture, will she find the courage to confront her past? This poignant narrative leaves us questioning how far we would go to reclaim our identities.

By A. Manette Ansay

Published: 2009

""Sometimes we must leave behind the life we think we know to embrace the unknown that awaits us, finding strength in our vulnerability and hope in the midst of despair.""

Book Review of Vinegar Hill

In a stark, troubling, yet ultimately triumphant celebration of self-determination, award-winning author A. Manette Ansay re-creates a stifling world of guilty and pain, and the tormented souls who inhabit it. It is 1972 when circumstance carries Ellen Grier and her family back to Holly's Field, Wisconsin. Dutifully accompanying her newly unemployed husband, Ellen has brought her two children into the home of her in-laws on Vinegar Hill--a loveless house suffused with the settling dust of bitterness and routine--where calculated cruelty is a way of life preserved and perpetuated in the service of a rigid, exacting and angry God. Behind a facade of false piety, there are sins and secrets in this place that could crush a vibrant young woman's passionate spirit. And here Ellen must find the straight to endure, change, and grow in the all-pervading darkness that threatens to destroy everything she is and everyone she loves.

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"Sometimes we must leave behind the life we think we know to embrace the unknown that awaits us, finding strength in our vulnerability and hope in the midst of despair."

Vinegar Hill

By A. Manette Ansay