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Once We Were Sisters cover art

Once We Were Sisters

By: Sheila Kohler
Narrated by: Sheila Kohler
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Summary

A powerful and heartbreaking portrait of the bond between two sisters, in life and beyond death.

Once We Were Sisters is the story of Maxine and Sheila Kohler. Growing up in the suffocating gentility of 1950s South Africa, the girls plan grand lives for themselves that will bring them out of the long shadow cast by their father's death and their overbearing mother's bullying. Maxine is just shy of her 40th birthday when her husband, a brilliant and respected surgeon, drives their car off the road and kills her. Devastated, Sheila returns to South Africa, determined to find answers to her sister's sudden death at the hands of her husband. More haunting, however, are the questions. How had she failed to protect her sister? Was Maxine's murder a matter of accident or destiny? What lies in the soil of their troubled motherland that condemns its women to such violence?

Powerful, moving and tragic, Once We Were Sisters is an act of love and an extraordinary account of an unspeakable loss.

©2017 Sheila Kohler (P)2017 Blackstone Audio
Biographies & Memoirs
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Critic reviews

''A rich and poignant memoir.'' (J.M. Coetzee)
''Beautiful and disturbing.... It is a tragic tale, with echoes of cultural sexism and misogyny, yet a triumphant story of a young woman's liberation from this culture and her emergence as a writer.'' (Joyce Carol Oates)

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Absorbing

Profound but with a light touch. Really enjoyed this. Narration very good.Having the writer narrate enhanced my enjoyment.

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