Child Bride: A Novel

Written by Jennifer Smith Turner

Narrated by Joyce Licorish

In the segregated South of the mid-1900s, fourteen-year-old Nell bears witness to a world that embraces the oppression of women. She is fascinated with the prospect of being an independent person—but when she turns sixteen, she is married off and brought to the city of Boston as a bride.

Nell is a shy girl who must quickly learn how to be a wife and mother. She quickly discovers that she must acquire new skills to navigate the unknown territory of the North, as well as her relationship with her husband, Henry, who is controlling and emotionally abusive. After giving birth to three children, her body begins to fail her and Henry, concerned for her health, pulls away from her physically. But this void of intimacy drives Nell into the arms of another man.

It’s through her encounter with Charles in the church kitchen, at the point when she is most vulnerable, that Nell finds escape from her depressed life with Henry. The cost though, is another pregnancy. When Charles finds out the baby is his, at first it appears he plans to leave Nell; ultimately, however, his love for her brings him back.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spotify Audiobooks
• Release date: Nov 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664993938

Jennifer Smith Turner

Jennifer Smith Turner is a New England–born writer. She is the author of two poetry books, Lost and Found: Rhyming Verse Honoring African American Heroes and Perennial Secrets: Poetry & Prose. She is the retired CEO of Girl Scouts of Connecticut. During her professional career, she served as an appointed government official with the State of Connecticut and the City of Hartford as a corporate and nonprofit executive, and as a member of many academic and nonprofit boards of directors. She retired to Martha's Vineyard with her husband, Eric Turner, in 2012.

[Sandra · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love everything about this book I even cried imagining myself in the book

[LynneGauthier · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very well written book. Those who enjoy books about growing through troubled relationships will enjoy this more than I did. I found parts of it too depressing. I found the historical context and culture interesting.

[Joyce Harout · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Couldn't finish. The narration was pretty bad and the descriptions were so long and boring.

[Jessica January · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great listen! Loved the story and the narrator! Loved all the characters, except Henry lol

[morales · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It reminded me of my Family. I couldn’t stop listening!

[Sharon Traylor · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book. I’m glad Nell got what she wanted.

[MyFirstName MyLastName · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A few anachronisms and maybe maybe a little too perfect happy ending in some ways but overall a good story with some important historical and cultural context. The accents were realistic and buried enough that it was easy to tell people apart and the voices fit the described personalities. The details of the accent seem authentic enough that this person might have grown up in the south. Overall very enjoyable and I basically listen to it in two long stretches walking dogs cleaning house and someone. It made the time fly by and I think it will be easy for most to engage with the heroine.

[V Shep · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Such a cute touching book on how one can still find love and accomplish dreams after a storm

[Rose Chevallier · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I did not expect this book to turn out to be a love story. Beautifully written the relationship fallacy of expectation vs. reality but never losing hope.

[Patt Mihailoff · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I must have passed over this novel a dozen times before listening to it. Something (not the unappealing over) kept drawing me back. Finally, I started listening and I am not sure if it was the perfect pitch narration of Joyce licorice or the beginning story that enthralled me. At first, I was a little confused by the timeline, but the introduction of certain events gave me an indication of where we were.

Because I’ve read and listened to SOOOO many books about people of color that started out or lead up to brutality, hard times, racism as the crux of the novel, I thought this was going to be the exact same thing. IT WAS NOT. It touched on all of those issues, but the novel was about the experience of a “CHILD BRIDE”, and how she tried and coped with an older man who was not physically abusive, but psychologically so, because it was all he knew. He was a big lump of one mindedness and (in my opinion) didn’t want to see the soul of Nell, his young, inexperienced girl.
I love the way the writer gave Nell the feelings of young love that she couldn’t find a way to fight. She was a sexual being without even knowing it.
I expected her husband Henery to be the one to have an illicit affair, but it wasn’t. I will not give it away but I invite everyone to listen to this wonderful novel that tells the tale of a young girl who became a woman and decided to be whatever she wanted to be, a wife, a good mother and on her way to being an educator in a time when that simply was not done.