The Moonflower Vine

This book was the rythymn of my childhood.My mother's family had grown up in Southern Missouri. I was born in Kansas City, Missouri. I spent every summer up to age twelve when we moved to California in now tornado ravaged Pierce City, Missouri. This book speaks of the things I know and love. I can see the places described in my minds eye. Our family grew Moonflowerws.I was "Decorated" by Chiggers more times than I can count. There is nothing more beautiful than a field of Lightning Bugs. The author knows Missouri, feels Missouri, shares Missouri. This is a wonderful book well worth your time. It tells the chronicle of a Missouri Family that could have lived next door. An all time favorite book.

My heart is full because I just finished reading "The Moonflower Vine." I don't know what else to do except to express my gratitude by writing this review.I am just overwhelmed by the truth and honesty of this book. (And it's very funny in spots, too). Every single one of the characters feels as if they are alive and breathing inside the book. Do yourself a favor. Track down this book and read it. You will treasure it as I do now.A friend recommended it to me because he had seen all the references to Oprah Winfrey connected to this book. I agree. If she ever reads it, watch out, world, because she will see to it that this book is reprinted and becomes famous. Remember how you felt when you closed the covers of the best book you ever read? That's the way you'll feel when you've finished "The Moonflower Vine;" it's truly a classic.

I first read "The Moonflower Vine" in the summer of 1972, when I would put my children to bed for their naps. It has become my ritual every summer to reread this book. I not only feel that I know these characters personally, but the story reminds me of a simpler time when I spent my afternoons tending my garden and reading and watching my children play in the sun. I would love to have Jetta Carleton's gift. She has said what so many of us wish we could say about our families - "...all the days that we had spent here together. What was I going to do when such days came no more?" I had no idea that copies of this book were so hard to come by. I will now treasure it even more. If you can find it, and have not read it, please do so. Then plant some moonflowers of your own. You'll never forget this story.

I read the abridged version of Moonflower Vine when I was a very young girl in the 70's. I was mesmerized by the author's magical prose and sharp, lasting impressions of the womens' deepest experiences. I have never read the entire novel and I continue to relish the day that I get my hot little hands on it! Parts of this book have stayed with me for almost two decades, clear and juicy, like the feast on a lazy hot summer day and then the naked dip in the river; the passion between the women and their men; the slow, sensual unfolding of the moonflower vine; the terror and grief...It's a tragedy that beautiful, soulful novels like this one are practically extinct. We readers of Jetta's story have a timeless delightful bond!

I read this book as a teenager -- as a Reader's Digest Condensed Book in the 60's -- and never forgot it. In about 1990 I found it in a library and read the full novel. The Moonflower Vine is an exquisite portrait of a rural family and the forces that both bind them together and push them apart. Matthew Soames is a farmer/schoolteacher who wants to live in more than one world. His wife Callie is content with the life Matthew has put her in, even content to remain illiterate in the face of his constant studies. They and their four highly individualistic daughters (including one who flies off with an early, amateur aviator) each have a story to tell, and a secret to keep. In today's age of "tell all" there is something both guilty and immensely pleasurable about keeping this secret with them. The plot is not, however, contrived. Carleton's style is plain, in some ways. At the same time, it offers more: you sit down to a meal of meat-and-potatoes prose; then the salads and side dishes start arriving. It's a lavish feast of words.