7 h 25 minAudiobook11 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
In a small Southern town, wanting more from life means making room for love—and the opinions of your neighbors.
Old Ebenezer by Opie Percival Read brings ambition and romance into the close world of a Deep South town. Ordinary people live among local manners that shape their choices. The wish to rise in the world runs beside the pull of love, giving this small-town story its central tension.
Read brings a journalist’s eye for speech, habit and character, along with a humorist’s dry smile. This is fiction at an easy pace, with room to pause over people rather than hurry past them. Its pleasures lie in gentle American humor and the ways a small community becomes a whole world.
What you’ll discover
- Ambition close to home Explore the wish to get ahead within the close boundaries of small-town life.
- Romance alongside aspiration Discover how love complicates the desire to rise in the world.
- A dry, gentle smile Enjoy humor rooted in ordinary habits, familiar speech and the observation of character.
- The weight of local manners Notice how a community’s customs help shape the lives of its ordinary people.
- Room to linger Settle into an easy pace that gives character and humor space to unfold.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this if you like gentle humor, talkative country characters, small-town schemes, newspaper offices, and a love story that grows gently through conversation, kindness and a few good jokes.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A Yankee softens in the South
- A law office with no clients
- A fog comes between partners
- A forfeit game makes a marriage
- Lyman refuses to sign the petition
- Fame, bribes and White Caps
- What the story is really about
- Two love stories and a church visit
- How the book is told
Who’s who
- Sam LymanA kind, quick-witted Vermont man turned teacher, lawyer and editor, who wants to do something worthwhile and protects the young woman bound to him by a joke.
- Eva McElwinThe banker's beautiful daughter, once spoiled and now thoughtful, who wants to escape a marriage her father has arranged and learns to think for herself.
- James McElwinThe proud, cowardly banker of Old Ebenezer, who wants the marriage undone and his daughter married to a rich man.
- WarrenThe cheerful, always broke editor of the Weekly Sentinel, who wants news, readers and a wife, and cannot bear to wait.
- Zeb SawyerA swaggering mule dealer engaged to Eva, who wants her hand and will use bribes and hired mobs to remove his rival.
- Uncle Buckley LightfootThe rambling old oracle of Fox Grove, who sends pickles and loyalty to the young man he once boarded.
- Jasper StaggsLyman's landlord, an old marshal who boasts of a famous arrest, enjoys the banker's embarrassment and cannot stay away from whiskey.
- Nancy PittA fresh, shy farm girl with sharp eyes, who catches Warren's eye in town and holds out against his hurry.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 7 h 25 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 11 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear Vecchio Ebenezer in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Vecchio Ebenezer
by Opie Percival Read · 1897
A forfeit game turns a Vermont schoolteacher into the husband of the richest banker's daughter in Old Ebenezer.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Old Ebenezer is a comic American novel by Opie Percival Read, set in a sleepy small town in the post-war South. It follows Sam Lyman, a Vermont-born schoolteacher past thirty-five, who leaves his classroom for the law and then finds a very different calling.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A Yankee softens in the South
Sam Lyman comes from Vermont, where he worked his way through college by tending horses and waiting tables at a mountain resort. He expected a good record to bring quick success. Instead he learned that the world of business had little use for his gentleness. Failure drove him south to a mild climate, where the energy drained out of his step and he settled into schoolteaching for forty dollars a month.
The author paints him as tall, lean and angular, with a kind face and a voice like church music. He is also whimsical, and a half sad smile often sits on his mouth. In the Fox Grove neighborhood, the schoolteacher is thought to know everything and to be lazy besides. Lyman's mind, however, stays ambitious even if his body does not.
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What is Old Ebenezer about?
It follows Sam Lyman, a Vermont schoolteacher turned lawyer and editor in a Southern town. A party game ties him by law to the banker's daughter, and he must decide whether to help undo the marriage or protect her.
Who is Sam Lyman in Old Ebenezer?
Lyman is a kind, witty Yankee who came south after failing in business. He teaches, studies law, then edits the town paper and writes stories that win him fame. He answers cruelty with humor and often chooses mercy.
Why can the mock wedding in Old Ebenezer be real?
The book says the state legislature has repealed the marriage license law, and the young man who leads the ceremony has just been ordained. Those two facts turn a party forfeit into a lawful marriage.
The author
Opie Percival Read
1852–1939 · American novelist and journalist
Opie Percival Read (1852–1939) was an American journalist and novelist. He was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and later lived in Chicago, Illinois, where he died. He wrote novels, short stories, and newspaper articles. His novels include Old Ebenezer, which was published in 1897.
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