"Douglas Armstrong writes with authenticity, artistry, and heart. Through his almost impossibly engaging protagonist, Emma, the author successfully crosses the "gender divide." Emma is more "real" than many living, breathing people I know, and Sunflowers—rife with poignant plot twists, poetic moments, and plausible surprises—is a towering achievement."
~ Paul McComas, author of “Planet of the Dates”
EVEN SUNFLOWERS CAST SHADOWS
Emma Starkey is a spunky little girl trying hard to be charitable and virtuous. But her calculated attempts have a way of backfiring with tumultuous consequences in Douglas Armstrong’s poignant story of small-town life in 1920s Kansas. As Emma’s grandmother wryly observes, “Even sunflowers cast shadows.”
Weaving through four years of Emma’s engaging disasters is a chaotic friendship with a transplanted Yankee whiz kid, Margaret Drummond, whose family arrives one summer burdened with a heavy secret and a flair for the dramatic. As Emma’s and Margaret’s brothers and sisters become friends, too, their lively pursuits and youthful infatuations begin to spawn rivalries that threaten to split them apart. In the end, perilous, even tragic turns await.
This novel, named the best by a Wisconsin author in 2010 (Council for Wisconsin Writers), recaptures a faded moment in time when innocence could still be lost grudgingly.
More information about Even Sunflowers Cast Shadows, Emma and the Starkey family history, book club and speaker information is available here.
“I fell in love with Emma. Like Huck Finn before her, she is plucky and funny, a moral compass in a town with more than its share of weirdos and wild adventure. Douglas Armstrong's story is charming, compelling, and masterfully told.”
"Even Sunflowers Cast Shadows wonderfully captures several years of the lively and sometimes reckless childhood of the very charming and likeable Emma Starkey. Emma's small Kansas town of the 1920s may seem to us a quieter time, but Emmas's story is filled with all the joyful and sad, terrifying and tender moments we know can be a child's life."
"Sunflowers chronicles Emma’s painful coming of age with grace, poignancy and heart, and is the kind of book that stays with you long after you’ve turned the last page."
EVEN SUNFLOWERS CAST SHADOWS
Emma Starkey is a spunky little girl trying hard to be charitable and virtuous. But her calculated attempts have a way of backfiring with tumultuous consequences in Douglas Armstrong’s poignant story of small-town life in 1920s Kansas. As Emma’s grandmother wryly observes, “Even sunflowers cast shadows.”
Weaving through four years of Emma’s engaging disasters is a chaotic friendship with a transplanted Yankee whiz kid, Margaret Drummond, whose family arrives one summer burdened with a heavy secret and a flair for the dramatic. As Emma’s and Margaret’s brothers and sisters become friends, too, their lively pursuits and youthful infatuations begin to spawn rivalries that threaten to split them apart. In the end, perilous, even tragic turns await.
This novel, named the best by a Wisconsin author in 2010 (Council for Wisconsin Writers), recaptures a faded moment in time when innocence could still be lost grudgingly.
More information about Even Sunflowers Cast Shadows, Emma and the Starkey family history, book club and speaker information is available here.
Excerpt
When he was fifteen, my brother. John B, balled up a fist and knocked my sister Eileen down in the parlor, chipping off a front tooth. Eileen probably had it coming—who can say—but it terrified me, Johnny yelling that she was tramp and a troublemaker before Mom stepped in to separate them. The bottom seemed to be falling out of everything. How far were we all going to sink?
Many years later, my sisters and I looked back on the horrid turn things that took place that day and debated the root cause of it. It was pretty clear to me that the blame should be laid at the Berns’ door. But my sister Sue-Sue thought none of it would’ve happened if the Drummonds hadn’t moved in behind us four summers before. Eileen said if you were going to argue that way, you might as well go back to when our ancestors dropped down out of the trees, since that was the origin of monkey business. Funny she should put it like that since climbing the tree outside her window played such a big part in the trouble.
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Novels by Douglas D. Armstrong
Novels by Douglas Armstrong