The Growing Season tells the inspiring story of how a scrappy rural childhood gave Frey the grit and resiliency to take risks that paid off in unexpected ways. Rather than leaving her community, she found adventure and opportunity in one of the most forgotten parts of our country. With fearlessness and creativity, she literally dug her destiny out of the dirt.
One tenacious woman's journey to escape rural poverty and create a billion-dollar farming business--without ever leaving the land she loves.
After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemà Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She's not sure what she will find—her cousin's husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemà knows little about the region.
NoemĂ is also an unlikely rescuer: She's a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she's also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin's new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by NoemĂ; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade NoemĂ's dreams with visions of blood and doom.
Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family's youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help NoemĂ, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family's past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family's once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as NoemĂ digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.
And NoemĂ, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.
Adam Bede is a hardy young carpenter who cares for his aging mother. His one weakness is the woman he loves blindly: the trifling town beauty, Hetty Sorrel, whose only delights are her baubles—and the delusion that the careless Captain Donnithorne may ask for her hand.
Betrayed by their innocence, both Adam and Hetty allow their foolish hearts to trap them in a triangle of seduction, murder, and retribution.
The novel follows four characters' rural lives in the fictional community of Hayslope—a pastoral and close-knit community in 1799. It revolves around a love "rectangle" between the beautiful but self-absorbed Hetty Sorrel; Captain Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire who seduces her; Adam Bede, her unacknowledged suitor; and Dinah Morris, Hetty's cousin, a fervent, virtuous, and beautiful Methodist lay preacher.
Set in the English Midlands of farmers and village craftsmen at the turn of the eighteenth century, this book relates a story of seduction issuing in "the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis".