
Flora
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $19.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Suzanne Toren
-
By:
-
Gail Godwin
About this listen
Ten-year-old Helen and her summer guardian, Flora, are isolated together in Helen's decaying family house while her father is doing secret war work in Oak Ridge during the final months of World War II. At three Helen lost her mother and the beloved grandmother who raised her has just died. A fiercely imaginative child, Helen is desperate to keep her house intact with all its ghosts and stories.
Flora, her late mother's twenty-two-year old first cousin, who cries at the drop of a hat, is ardently determined to do her best for Helen. Their relationship and its fallout, played against a backdrop of a lost America will haunt Helen for the rest of her life.
This darkly beautiful audiobook about a child and a caretaker in isolation evokes shades of The Turn of the Screw and also harks back to Godwin's memorable novel of growing up, The Finishing School. With its house on top of a mountain and a child who may be a bomb that will one day go off, Flora tells a story of love, regret, and the things we can't undo.
©2013 Gail Godwin (P)2013 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
The Lost Bookshop
- By: Evie Woods
- Narrated by: Avena Mansergh-Wallace, Olivia Mace, Nick Biadon
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives. But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. And by unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder…where nothing is as it seems.
-
-
Incredible history book story
- By Elisabeth on 10-25-23
By: Evie Woods
-
Old Lovegood Girls
- By: Gail Godwin
- Narrated by: Rosemary Benson
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the dean of Lovegood Junior College for Girls decides to pair Feron Hood with Merry Jellicoe as roommates in 1958, she has no way of knowing the far-reaching consequences of the match. Feron, who has narrowly escaped from a dark past, instantly takes to Merry and her composed personality. Surrounded by the traditions and four-story Doric columns of Lovegood, the girls - and their friendship - begin to thrive.
-
-
Isolated Characters
- By Lori Flick on 01-17-25
By: Gail Godwin
-
Grief Cottage
- By: Gail Godwin
- Narrated by: Jacob York
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The haunting tale of a desolate cottage, and the hair-thin junction between this life and the next, from best-selling National Book Award finalist Gail Godwin. After his mother's death, 11-year-old Marcus is sent to live on a small South Carolina island with his great aunt, a reclusive painter with a haunted past. Aunt Charlotte, otherwise a woman of few words, points out a ruined cottage, telling Marcus she had visited it regularly after she'd moved there 30 years ago because it matched the ruin of her own life.
-
-
Character story or ghost story ?
- By RueRue on 12-18-17
By: Gail Godwin
-
To Kill a Mockingbird
- By: Harper Lee
- Narrated by: Sissy Spacek
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harper Lee’s Pulitzer prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep south - and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred, available now for the first time as a digital audiobook. One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the 20th century by librarians across the country.
-
-
A gift to be treasured
- By David Shear on 07-09-14
By: Harper Lee
-
Charms for the Easy Life
- By: Kaye Gibbons
- Narrated by: Kate Fleming
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A family without men, the Birches live gloriously offbeat lives in the lush, green backwoods of North Carolina. Radiant, headstrong Sophia and her shy, brilliant daughter, Margaret, possess powerful charms to ward off loneliness, despair, and the human misery that often beats a path to their door. And they are protected by the eccentric wisdom and muscular love of the remarkable matriarch Charlie Kate, a solid, uncompromising, self-taught healer who treats everything from boils to broken bones to broken hearts.
-
-
So Lovely!
- By Doodle slave on 01-04-17
By: Kaye Gibbons
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
The Lost Bookshop
- By: Evie Woods
- Narrated by: Avena Mansergh-Wallace, Olivia Mace, Nick Biadon
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives. But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. And by unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder…where nothing is as it seems.
-
-
Incredible history book story
- By Elisabeth on 10-25-23
By: Evie Woods
-
Old Lovegood Girls
- By: Gail Godwin
- Narrated by: Rosemary Benson
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the dean of Lovegood Junior College for Girls decides to pair Feron Hood with Merry Jellicoe as roommates in 1958, she has no way of knowing the far-reaching consequences of the match. Feron, who has narrowly escaped from a dark past, instantly takes to Merry and her composed personality. Surrounded by the traditions and four-story Doric columns of Lovegood, the girls - and their friendship - begin to thrive.
-
-
Isolated Characters
- By Lori Flick on 01-17-25
By: Gail Godwin
-
Grief Cottage
- By: Gail Godwin
- Narrated by: Jacob York
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The haunting tale of a desolate cottage, and the hair-thin junction between this life and the next, from best-selling National Book Award finalist Gail Godwin. After his mother's death, 11-year-old Marcus is sent to live on a small South Carolina island with his great aunt, a reclusive painter with a haunted past. Aunt Charlotte, otherwise a woman of few words, points out a ruined cottage, telling Marcus she had visited it regularly after she'd moved there 30 years ago because it matched the ruin of her own life.
-
-
Character story or ghost story ?
- By RueRue on 12-18-17
By: Gail Godwin
-
To Kill a Mockingbird
- By: Harper Lee
- Narrated by: Sissy Spacek
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harper Lee’s Pulitzer prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep south - and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred, available now for the first time as a digital audiobook. One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the 20th century by librarians across the country.
-
-
A gift to be treasured
- By David Shear on 07-09-14
By: Harper Lee
-
Charms for the Easy Life
- By: Kaye Gibbons
- Narrated by: Kate Fleming
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A family without men, the Birches live gloriously offbeat lives in the lush, green backwoods of North Carolina. Radiant, headstrong Sophia and her shy, brilliant daughter, Margaret, possess powerful charms to ward off loneliness, despair, and the human misery that often beats a path to their door. And they are protected by the eccentric wisdom and muscular love of the remarkable matriarch Charlie Kate, a solid, uncompromising, self-taught healer who treats everything from boils to broken bones to broken hearts.
-
-
So Lovely!
- By Doodle slave on 01-04-17
By: Kaye Gibbons
-
The Boston Girl: A Novel
- By: Anita Diamant
- Narrated by: Linda Lavin
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Addie Baum is "The Boston Girl", born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie's intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can’t imagine - a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture and new opportunities for women.
-
-
Quiet, lovely little story
- By Amazon Customer on 08-01-18
By: Anita Diamant
-
Secrets of a Charmed Life
- By: Susan Meissner
- Narrated by: Alana Kerr Collins
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Current day, Oxford, England. Young American scholar Kendra Van Zant, eager to pursue her vision of a perfect life, interviews Isabel McFarland just when the elderly woman is ready to give up secrets about the war that she has kept for decades...beginning with who she really is. What Kendra receives from Isabel is both a gift and a burden--one that will test her convictions and her heart.
-
-
Rare 5-Star Across the Board!
- By Imamomof4 on 06-14-15
By: Susan Meissner
-
In the Time of the Butterflies
- By: Julia Alvarez
- Narrated by: Noemi de la Puente, Alma Cuervo, Bianca Carnacho, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is November 25, 1960, and the bodies of three beautiful, convent-educated sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. El Caribe, the official newspaper, reports their deaths as an accident. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of General Raphael Leonidas Trujillo's dictatorship.
-
-
Maybe it's just me but...
- By Sarah PK on 03-05-16
By: Julia Alvarez
-
Homesick
- My Own Story
- By: Jean Fritz
- Narrated by: Jean Fritz
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This heartwarming fictionalized autobiography tells the story of what it is like for a little girl to be growing up in an unfamiliar place. While other girls her age were enjoying childhood in America, Jean Fritz was in China in the midst of political unrest. During this time, foreigners were becoming more and more unpopular, and evacuation at a moment’s notice was imminent. Although Jean appreciated the beauty of China - the mountains, the countryside, the sea - she knew she belonged in America and longed to make her home there.
-
-
Great book!
- By R. SEVERSON on 10-19-18
By: Jean Fritz
-
Summer of Fear
- By: Lois Duncan
- Narrated by: Ruth Ann Phimister
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For 15-year-old Rachel Bryant, summer vacation promises to be fun. Her 17-year-old cousin Julia will be coming to Albuquerque, New Mexico to live with the Bryants, following her parents’ deaths. With two brothers, Rachel is looking forward to finally having a sister. From the moment Julia arrives, everyone is enchanted with the orphaned teenager. But Rachel finds her strangely disturbing. Soon an evil poison seems to seep into every corner of her life. Can she discover what Julia is trying to do before it’s too late?
-
-
Really Enjoyable Listen
- By Jacquelyn on 06-23-23
By: Lois Duncan
-
The Robber Bride
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 20 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments - one of Margaret Atwood’s most unforgettable characters lurks at the center of this intricate novel like a spider in a web. The glamorous, irresistible, unscrupulous Zenia is nothing less than a fairy-tale villain in the memories of her former friends. Roz, Charis, and Tony - university classmates decades ago - were reunited at Zenia’s funeral and have met monthly for lunch ever since, obsessively retracing the destructive swath she once cut through their lives.
-
-
BORED with her own novel?
- By Darwin8u on 05-16-12
By: Margaret Atwood
-
Too Much Happiness
- Stories
- By: Alice Munro
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr, Arthur Morey
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the long title story, we accompany Sophia Kovalevsky - a late-19th-century Russian émigré and mathematician - on a winter journey that takes her from the Riviera, where she visits her lover, to Paris, Germany, and Denmark, where she has a fateful meeting with a local doctor, and finally to Sweden, where she teaches at the only university in Europe willing to employ a female mathematician.
-
-
Each story should start on its own track
- By Shyguy123 on 01-04-16
By: Alice Munro
-
To See the Moon Again
- By: Jamie Langston Turner
- Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The first step to letting go of the past is forgiving it …Every day of her life Julia Rich lives with the memory of a horrible accident she caused long ago. In the years since, she has tried to hide her guilt in the quiet routine of teaching at a small South Carolina college, avoiding close relationships with family and would-be friends. But one day a phone call from Carmen, a niece she has never met, disrupts her carefully controlled world.
-
-
Beautiful Story of Forgiveness and Selfless Love
- By sharon on 09-20-14
-
Bettyville
- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
-
-
Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
-
Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
-
-
The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
-
After the Parade
- By: Lori Ostlund
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sensitive, big-hearted, and achingly self-conscious, 40-year-old Aaron Englund long ago escaped the confines of his Midwestern hometown, but he still feels like an outcast. After 20 years under the Pygmalion-like direction of his older partner, Walter, Aaron at last decides it is time to stop letting life happen to him and to take control of his own fate.
-
-
Narrator
- By Barbara on 11-10-24
By: Lori Ostlund
-
The Mighty Franks
- A Memoir
- By: Michael Frank
- Narrated by: Michael Frank
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The family is uncommonly close: Michael's childless Auntie Hankie and Uncle Irving, glamorous Hollywood screenwriters, are doubly related— Hankie is his father's sister, and Irving is his mother's brother. The two families live near each other in Laurel Canyon. In this strangely intertwined world, even the author's grandmothers—who dislike each other—share a nearby apartment.
-
-
If Proust Wrote a Mystery...
- By Godwillen on 08-04-18
By: Michael Frank
What listeners say about Flora
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
- Tunie S.
- 02-26-15
Good read
It was a good read. But at times it kinda drag on and on. It's not one I would read again.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- RueRue
- 03-16-14
Good story, wrong narrator
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
I really enjoyed the story and would recommend on that basis. However, Suzanne Toran's narration struck the wrong note for me. For a story told from the perspective of a "10 going on 11" year old girl, the narrator sounded much too old. Also, her reading voice was a bit lethargic and distrusted the momentum of the story.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Debra J OConnor
- 03-29-15
One of the few books about "real people.
This story is set at the end of WWII, but the timing could have been many times. The people in the story are real with all of their wonder and flaws. I laughed, was angry, and cried. The book talks about true remorse and this hit me the most in a time of self love and telling ourselves that we have no fault in anything. This is not done in a preachy way and I cared about all the people. I look forward to reading more. of this author. The audible was marvelous and I got completely lost in the story. A great read in a genre that is almost extinct.
I
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Earnest
- 07-04-16
Languid, intimate and evocative listen.
How surprising a book can be. Bit by bit, piece by piece, a story unfolds while, even a close reader, can perhaps not consciously feel how strongly the events are becoming entwined with their own memories, by their own life.
The power wrought by this author transcended many Continents, a different strata of life, an almost different language and shook this listener to the core.
How similar we all are even if we are very different.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- JEAN9
- 03-17-16
Slow but worth the listen
I really loved this book. It was slow but absorbing. Just what I needed after the suspenseful one I just finished. I thought the narrator was perfect. Someone else thought it evoked similarities to To Kill A Mockingbird, and I have to agree.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Dmc r
- 04-26-14
A Summer in the life of a ten year old girl
What did you love best about Flora?
Self-centered, often unkind Helen we learn has inherited some of her least nice traits. Her summer caretaker, cousin Flora, contrasts those traits. The story flows so believably and easily through the eyes of the child and enhanced by the reminiscence of the adult remembering the child of that summer. Suzanne Toren has so well captured the petulance of Helen as well as the gentleness of Flora.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- michele
- 06-27-15
Coming of age during final days of WWII
Would you listen to Flora again? Why?
Yes, it is a rare audio book that I would listen to again. It has flavors of "To Kill a Mockingbird."
What was one of the most memorable moments of Flora?
I enjoyed the summer routines.
Which character – as performed by Suzanne Toren – was your favorite?
Flora was a simple but decent character and I would rate her as my favorite.
Who was the most memorable character of Flora and why?
Frankie narrates the book and it is easy to relate to her situation during the war times.
Any additional comments?
This was a good wholesome novel. No sex, minimal profanity and overall a good story.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful