It’s Free Audio Friday, special Banned Books Week edition! Celebrate your freedom to read this week by listening to Elizabeth’s LibriVox recording of The Awakening by Kate Chopin. This book is on the list of frequently challenged classics, which contains many other amazing and influential works.

Kate Chopin’s 1899 novella is about the personal, sexual, and artistic awakening of a young wife and mother, Edna Pontellier. While on vacation at Grand Isle, an island in the Gulf of Mexico, Edna befriends the talented pianist Mlle. Reisz and the sympathetic Robert Lebrun, both of whom will influence her startling life choices. Chopin’s novel created a scandal upon its original publication and effectively destroyed her writing career. Now, however, it is considered one of the finest American novels of the 19th century.