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51st out of 171 books
—
159 voters
Evergreen (Werner Family Saga #1)
by
Belva Plain
Born into poverty and fear, Anna is desperate to leave her native Poland. Determined to make something of herself, Anna moves into a cramped New York slum and finds a job in a sweatshop. When two very different men fall in love with her, Anna is destined to be forever torn in love and loyalty.
Paperback, 698 pages
Published
January 1st 1978
by Dell
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Nov 29, 2011
Lisa (Harmonybites)
rated it
2 of 5 stars
Recommended to Lisa (Harmonybites) by:
The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Ultimate Reading List
I could see why some might like this. Sometimes you're in the mood for a long trashy wallow, and this could deliver it. Here you have nearly 700 pages of eye-straining small font about a Polish Jew, Anna, who comes to America not long after the turn of the 20th Century in the years before World War I. She starts out living with her cousin on Hester street, and I imagine many might have seen the stories of their own grandmothers and great-grandmothers in Anna when this was published. I can unders...more
I started reading this book because I got the book "Complete Idiot's Guide The Ultimate Reading List". It was the first book on the Popular fiction list. I vaguely remembered seeing it before but it looked like my kind of book - big, juicy, multi-generational saga.
It is. Following Anna as she grows up in Europe, comes to America, and has the whole immigrant experience. Living in the poor Jewish section of New York, going to work as a maid in a wealthy household (attracting the attention of the s...more
It is. Following Anna as she grows up in Europe, comes to America, and has the whole immigrant experience. Living in the poor Jewish section of New York, going to work as a maid in a wealthy household (attracting the attention of the s...more
There are books that may not be written with great 'literary' style, but which are nevertheless written with a talent for good, sincere storytelling. EVERGREEN is one such novel, and it belongs on a shelf with similar novels such as Colleen McCullough's THE THORN BIRDS and Rosamund Pilcher's THE SHELL SEEKERS, wonderfully entertaining family sagas spanning generations and often continents as well, peopled with colorful characters and chronicling the universal joys and sorrows of life.
There are t...more
There are t...more
This is one of my favorite books of all time. My mother gave me a copy when I was a teenager and I stayed up late many nights reading under the covers long after I should have been asleep. It is a sweeping family saga full of characters you care about, and whom you will miss when you put this book back on the shelf. Anna, Paul and Joseph are real people with real flaws, a refreshing change from the perfect protagonists that Danielle Steele is famous for (and who happen to bug the heck out of me)...more
Geez Louise, I feel like I deserve an award for getting through this whole novel. At first, I thought this book would be like a doughnut, light and fluffy with no real substance, but still sweet and delicious. But it wasn't like that at all. It was like one of those dense and heavy power bagels with nuts and dried fruit. Not that it was a difficult read or anything. It was quite simple language and actually the earnest and sincere way in which Belva Plain told the story was one of the things I l...more
Aug 03, 2011
Tonia
added it
Currently reading it. Good enough epic novel. Has kept me in there. I like books about olden times as you get to learn about history as well. I love reading about the way people lived back when. This story is about one womans life from being a child in Poland, orphaned because of a cholera epidemic at about 1890. Then when she was 16 made her passage to America in search of a better life.She has a family goes from absolute poverty to being upper middlerclass by sheer hardwork. Survives the Depre...more
Joining goodreads.com has made me think about my first time. No, not that. My first "real book". Believe it or not it was Evergreen. Which probably explains quite a bit, doesn't it?
I really should not have been reading this book in fourth grade. I can easily draw the analogy of boys hiding their dad's Playboy magazines.
My elementary school friend, Karen Murray gave it to me after she was finished with it.
I am not kidding when I tell you I hid this book from my parents and read it cover to cover...more
I really should not have been reading this book in fourth grade. I can easily draw the analogy of boys hiding their dad's Playboy magazines.
My elementary school friend, Karen Murray gave it to me after she was finished with it.
I am not kidding when I tell you I hid this book from my parents and read it cover to cover...more
I just loved this book. The characters were so real to me and getting to know each of them made me want to know more about them.
Anna, yearning for a more and better life, flees Poland to go to America. She comes to New York and moves in to live with cousin Ruth and husband, Solly Levinson, 4 children and 6 boarders. She worked sewing to make a living. She went to a school to learn more and met a wonderful teacher, Ms. Thorne. Becoming restless with sewing, Anna found a job as a maid in the home...more
Anna, yearning for a more and better life, flees Poland to go to America. She comes to New York and moves in to live with cousin Ruth and husband, Solly Levinson, 4 children and 6 boarders. She worked sewing to make a living. She went to a school to learn more and met a wonderful teacher, Ms. Thorne. Becoming restless with sewing, Anna found a job as a maid in the home...more
I enjoyed this book. It spanned several decades and takes us from Anna first coming to America as a young beautiful immigrant to being a grandmother. We see the story told from several perspectives along the way. The younger generation wasn't nearly as intersting as the older generation.... We saw struggle and determination along with some bed hopping from Anna and her peers. The younger generation seeming lived inthe lap of luxury and were boring.... At right at 700 pages it's not a quick read....more
This is an extraordinary book with Anna coming to America from Poland. To take the jouney through the eyes of someone else is amazing and to live in New York City when it was just being settled is something to behold. I loved her adventures in this country; but, was sorry for Anna when she married someone she was not in love with at the time. I do understand that she did grow to love her husband or how else would she be able to stay with him. I thought sure when she was pregnant with her lover's...more
While the plot is full of changes and twists and historical detail is accurate, and characters are believable enough; I found the writing style lacking. You hear what the characters say, but there is no insight into how they think, except for some "corny" (good word, Helen!) lines with exclamation marks. While the book has lots of content and action, it lacks in warmth and emotion. I was surprised that Anna quit her job in the first place, nothing indicated any emotional turmoil preceding the ev...more
I recall reading this book as a young teenager and I distinctly remember being captivated by it. Fast forward a few years (ahem...decades) and I'm having a hard time seeing just what was so captivating about this story. I got about 1/2 or 2/3 through before this one landed in the "life's too short" category and I moved on to more interesting selections on my to-read list.
I'm usually a real sucker for multigenerational sagas and Evergreen has a great, if slightly overdone, premise (of course, th...more
I'm usually a real sucker for multigenerational sagas and Evergreen has a great, if slightly overdone, premise (of course, th...more
I've finally finished this book.... It was very well written, interesting story, but very LONG. What I liked about it, is that it had well developed characters and complex story line. It was easy to feel the hardship of Anna and her family. Immigration is never easy and for a poor Jewish girl from a small village in Poland was extra hard.
Since it was a family saga, there was heart break, deaths, love affairs, and financial successes and loses. It was great to see each generation growing and est...more
Since it was a family saga, there was heart break, deaths, love affairs, and financial successes and loses. It was great to see each generation growing and est...more
In 1985, NBC aired a miniseries based on Belva Plain's novel Evergreen. I know I watched it and loved it. I also know that I read most of the book and loved it but wasn't able to finish it. I can't quite remember the order of events of whether I saw the movie first or read the book first but I can tell you that the book made enough of an impression on me that I've been wanting to re-read and finally finish the book for the last twenty-three years.
After re-reading it I have come to two conclusion...more
After re-reading it I have come to two conclusion...more
OK, I must confess I have a thing for those cheesy family sagas they sell in grocery store checkout lines. This one is pretty old -- I think it was turned into a tv miniseries with Lesley Ann Warren in the 1970's -- but somehow I never got around to reading it until now. As cheesy family sagas go, it's pretty enjoyable. The story is about a Jewish woman who immigrates to the US in the early 1900's. She rises up from poverty, marries one man and loves another, and raises a couple of children who...more
This popular book came out in 1973 and tells the story of a young girl who immigrates to the US by herself and makes her life in NY city. As I was reading, I kept thinking that I had read this before. I think it is so similar to many novels about immigrants that it just seemed familiar. As a maid in a wealthy household, she falls in love with their son. At least he
didn't get her pregnant as in most of these novels--well, at least not until
she was married to someone else... Lynnette
didn't get her pregnant as in most of these novels--well, at least not until
she was married to someone else... Lynnette
Dec 21, 2009
Helen
added it
Well, I am not sure how many stars to give this one because I read it when I was in high school and thought it was the best thing since sliced bread... However, rereading some of other Belva Plain titles when I got older revealed that her writing style is kind of corny, and that I don't like it as much as I imagined I did... I love family sagas, so this one fits right in. In addition I like sagas with sequels and this one fits in too... Maybe one day I will reread it and then give it a rating......more
Similar to Rosamunde Pilcher, but not as good as Maeve Binchy, in my opinion. It's a family saga spanning the 20th century. I found the story readable enough, but at times the pace dragged and skimming became more frequent as I neared the end. I found the point of view shifts awkward. The story mostly limits its POV to Anna, the matriarch of the family. But at sporadic times, it shifts to Joseph, Iris, Theo, or Eric, and then it suddenly shifts back. I was certainly able to follow it, but I felt...more
Okay, so when I first started this book I thought it would be an epic about the courage and spirit that comes shining through as people face the hardships that life has to offer. As it turned out it is not all that deep and has a real soap opera feel to it. Yuck, disappointment abounds. Slam! (that was the book closing in frustration) No I am not finishing it. It is a waste of time and there are good things to read all around. So it is onward for me.
A Wonderful Epic Story of Anna Friedman, who came to America from Poland in search of a better life..
The story is an interesting read since it offers a bit of everything:New York sweatshops,European eloquence, Nazi death camps, campus riots. This is all easily woven into the story since it spans three generations. So you will see Anna's rise from poverty wealth and success.
The story is an interesting read since it offers a bit of everything:New York sweatshops,European eloquence, Nazi death camps, campus riots. This is all easily woven into the story since it spans three generations. So you will see Anna's rise from poverty wealth and success.
Nov 03, 2012
Rebecca
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction-jewish,
fiction-usa
If I passed this in a bookstore I probably wouldn't have picked it up, but seeing as it somehow made its way into my possession, I read it anyway. I was pleasantly surprised that this was a fast read, that the things I thought would happen didn't happen, and the things I didn't think would happen, did. There's nothing super scandalous and the writing won't set the world on fire, but it's a good, long, cohesive story well told.
My mom loaned me this book and said it was one of her all-time favorites. I enjoyed it, especially how it related to our time; they having gone through "The Great Depression" and our own country going through and economic depression right now. I also enjoyed the geneology of the family, but was a bit surprised by the adultery.
This is one of my favorite books of all time. I stumbled upon this book as a teenager and stayed up many a nights to complete this book. It is one of those books that I come back to time & again. The characters are some that you end up caring about deeply ~ read this book - you will understand my stance!
My mom loved reading this on her IPad and told me she loved it and made me buy it right then from amazon so I could read it. She loved the writing. I didn't think the writing was beautiful at all but rather (Plain). Ha ha. The story was very interesting though. I could picture it all in my head.
Read it when a pre-teen, had big impact on me; re-reading to see if it still feels impactful. Gave me a perspective as a youngster of the long arc of life, and generations, and how things progress and change, and love may come and go... just things a kid doesn't Really understand!
Belva Plain is known for writing historical family sagas filled with historical details, sympathetic characters, and heartfelt emotion. You may wish to start with this novel, which details the hope and hardship of the American immigrant experience.
Read this 25 or 30 years ago and have read it at least 3 times since. I love it and it is the book that got me hooked on Belva Plain. This book is exactly the kind of historical fiction that keeps me turning pages way past my bedtime.
I always find that Belvia Plain writes well about families over long periods of time... Are they earth shattering novels, I dont think so but they are easy to read especially if you have just started on the journey....
This was one of the first "grown-up" books I read. My mom had read it and I begged her to let me read it. I was hooked and never went back to those "kiddy" books. lol
Great book, lots of history without being boring.
Great book, lots of history without being boring.
The intriguing saga of a young woman's immigration to America in the early 20th century, the changes she and her family see through two world wars, the Depression and into the '60s. A good read.
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Belva Plain was a best-selling American author of mainstream women's fiction.
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Jul 31, 2012 07:32pm
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