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The poignant, utterly original story of two women separated across time but united by the arrival of Halley's comet, as blazing and as daring as their stories.
1986. The Earthshine Soap Company has given Nona Dixon everything, from making her the brand's first Earthshine Girl to launching her acting career. It also threatens to be the very thing that causes her to unravel when a group of Jane Does file a class action lawsuit accusing the company of putting harmful ingredients into their products. When Nona begins investigating Bertie Tuttle, the company's third-generation owner, she uncovers a complicated history involving her benefactor and a mysterious woman named Opal Doucet.
1910. Seventy-six years earlier, Opal Doucet, a rural doctor's wife, is pregnant, on the run, and desperate to get to Paris and to the charismatic spiritualist who supposedly communed with her first love. To save money, Opal goes to work in the Earthshine Soap factory as an Earthshine Girl where she uses her knowledge of medicine, and the spiritualist's teachings, to prescribe cures to the women who've come down with mystery ailments. As she and Bertie Tuttle secretly partner in a labor strike intended to improve the working conditions at the factory, Opal must decide the cost of her own freedom.
Gorgeously written and intricately constructed, Everything Lost Returns is a story of desire and friendship, guilt and redemption, and the power we have, in our own small way, to change the course of history.
1986. The Earthshine Soap Company has given Nona Dixon everything, from making her the brand's first Earthshine Girl to launching her acting career. It also threatens to be the very thing that causes her to unravel when a group of Jane Does file a class action lawsuit accusing the company of putting harmful ingredients into their products. When Nona begins investigating Bertie Tuttle, the company's third-generation owner, she uncovers a complicated history involving her benefactor and a mysterious woman named Opal Doucet.
1910. Seventy-six years earlier, Opal Doucet, a rural doctor's wife, is pregnant, on the run, and desperate to get to Paris and to the charismatic spiritualist who supposedly communed with her first love. To save money, Opal goes to work in the Earthshine Soap factory as an Earthshine Girl where she uses her knowledge of medicine, and the spiritualist's teachings, to prescribe cures to the women who've come down with mystery ailments. As she and Bertie Tuttle secretly partner in a labor strike intended to improve the working conditions at the factory, Opal must decide the cost of her own freedom.
Gorgeously written and intricately constructed, Everything Lost Returns is a story of desire and friendship, guilt and redemption, and the power we have, in our own small way, to change the course of history.
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Reviews
"In 1986, Nona Dixon, an actress whose soap opera is sponsored by her childhood employer, Earthshine Soap, finds her life unraveling when she's named in a lawsuit alleging that the product harms women's health. Once the brand's face, Nora is pulled into a scandal on top of her already complicated life. The narrative shifts to 1910, where Opal Doucet, a pregnant factory worker, secretly makes "Comet Pills" for co-workers while hiding from her husband and planning an escape to Paris. Both timelines coincide with the appearance of Halley's comet. Narrator Shana Pennington-Baird's shifts in tone, cadence, and accent add emotional depth, grounding the story. Without her brilliant performance, the book's limited character development would be more overt.
A varied, nimble narration keeps this complicated, dual-timeline story engaging."
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