Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Worthy
    Worthy
    Worthy
    Audiobook8 hours

    Worthy

    Written by Catherine Ryan Hyde

    Narrated by Nick Podehl and Tanya Eby

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde tells the story of two strangers coming together and uncovering a shared tragedy that kept them apart.

    They might’ve been a family.

    Virginia finally had the chance to explore a relationship with Aaron when he asked her on a date. She had been waiting, hoping that the widower and his young son, Buddy, would welcome her into their lives. But a terrible tragedy strikes on the night of their first kiss, crushing their hopes for a future together.

    Nineteen years later, Virginia is engaged, though she has not forgotten Aaron or Buddy. When her dog goes missing and it comes to light that her fiancé set him loose, a distraught Virginia breaks off the engagement and is alone once again. A shy young man has found the missing pet, and although he’s bonded with the animal, he answers his conscience and returns the dog. Before long, Virginia and the young man discover a connection from their pasts that will help them let go of painful memories and change their lives forever.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJun 2, 2015
    ISBN9781501256325
    Worthy
    Author

    Catherine Ryan Hyde

    Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of thirty-three published books. Her bestselling 1999 novel, Pay It Forward, adapted into a major Warner Bros. motion picture, made the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults list and was translated into more than two dozen languages for distribution in more than thirty countries. Her novels Becoming Chloe and Jumpstart the World were included on the ALA’s Rainbow List; Jumpstart the World was also a finalist for two Lambda Literary Awards and won Rainbow Awards in two categories. The Language of Hoofbeats won a Rainbow Award. More than fifty of her short stories have been published in many journals, including the Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and the Sun, and in the anthologies Santa Barbara Stories and California Shorts, as well as the bestselling anthology Dog Is My Co-Pilot. Her short fiction received honorable mention in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, a second-place win for the Tobias Wolff Award, and nominations for Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize. Three have also been cited in Best American Short Stories. Hyde is the founder and former president of the Pay It Forward Foundation. As a professional public speaker, she has addressed the National Conference on Education, twice spoken at Cornell University, met with AmeriCorps members at the White House, and shared a dais with Bill Clinton. An avid equestrian, photographer, and traveler, she lives in California.

    More audiobooks from Catherine Ryan Hyde

    Related to Worthy

    Related audiobooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Scrub

      Oct 3, 2018

      The Scrub
      3 min read

    • Article

      Wyoming Is a Real Place

      Jun 1, 2021

      Wyoming Is a Real Place
      7 min read

    • Article

      Brothers and Sisters

      Dec 7, 2021

      Passing through the hallway on their way out, her sisters tipped their heads in the direction of the statue of the goddess Durga. They did it automatically, almost imperceptibly, and with wide, innocent eyes, like spies letting their handler know the

      13 min read

    • Article

      Love And Lies

      Oct 5, 2022

      Love And Lies
      8 min read

    • Article

      Love And Lies

      Oct 5, 2022

      Love And Lies
      8 min read

    • Article

      SIX PIX with Sam Fairweather

      Jul 1, 2021

      SIX PIX with Sam Fairweather
      13 min read

    • Article

      Dive into… HAPPY AS By Larry Emdur

      Jul 31, 2022

      Our Books Editor Wade Sellers gives us his fave pick for the week! It was my twenty-first birthday. Some of my work colleagues took me out for drinks and presented me with a beautiful new suit. They'd all chipped in for this special birthday present.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Water Under The Bridge

      Nov 10, 2022

      The sound of water coursing over rocks filled my ears. The creek banks reached out with lush green vegetation as if to grab and hold me, and the warm June air was sweet with the smell of honeysuckle. The creek was small. Four good jumps and I could g

      26 min read

    • Article

      Swisher Sweets

      May 1, 2022

      Swisher Sweets
      17 min read

    • Article

      Cleaning the Step

      Jan 4, 2024

      Ada waits until they’ve all gone – to school, to work if they’re lucky, to fritter away their pensions in the betting shop or sit in the sad little café on the main road, nursing cups of tea and remembering. Better to wait out of sight. Not everyone

      6 min read

    • Article

      Deet

      Feb 6, 2020

      Deet
      2 min read

    • Article

      Something Strange in Grandpa’s Woods

      Mar 1, 2022

      Something Strange in Grandpa’s Woods
      3 min read

    • Article

      Till We Meet Again

      Aug 25, 2023

      Till We Meet Again
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Conversation

      Dec 1, 2019

      A Conversation
      10 min read

    • Article

      Refitting a Contest 43

      May 14, 2020

      Refitting a Contest 43
      4 min read

    • Article

      Karina By The Lake

      Sep 16, 2019

      Karina By The Lake
      10 min read

    • Article

      Creature Comfort

      Sep 1, 2020

      If your horse gets a foot abscess, try wrapping the foot in a newborn baby’s disposable nappy, with some warm saline water in it. It works wonders to draw out the pus and stays on well once wrapped up with gaffer tape. Change regularly until the absc

      2 min read

    • Article

      The July War

      Sep 8, 2020

      In summer, our neighborhood quiets in phases. The quieting begins in May. Schools give their older kids, the seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds, a month off to prepare for the baccalaureate exams. Following a ritual as old as our parents, the students

      21 min read

    • Article

      A Gentle STIRRING

      Mar 13, 2024

      A Gentle STIRRING
      6 min read

    • Article

      Who Saved the Day?

      Feb 1, 2022

      Who Saved the Day?
      4 min read

    • Article

      Uncontrollable, Irrelevant

      Dec 6, 2022

      My sister called me the other day. She wanted to let me know that I had once more been merciless and cruel in my relations with our parents. “They say there’s a lot of anger in you,” she said. “It makes them mad. It hurts their feelings. They think y

      14 min read

    • Article

      Winter Wheat

      Sep 1, 2019

      Winter Wheat
      12 min read

    • Article

      Let Me Do It

      Jun 1, 2023

      Let Me Do It
      6 min read

    • Article

      I Met Myself Coming Back

      Oct 6, 2022

      I Met Myself Coming Back
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Worthy

    4/5

    93 ratings9 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      What a wonderful story. It was sad and happy, nail biting due to the storm, I love any story that has a dog. The two narrators had perfect pitch for this story.
    • 5/5
      Catherine's stories are unique episodes of love in all it's many nuances and ways of being. Sometimes it touches on romantic love,but often it is the other wonderful aspects of it which grave our lives. this was such a story.
    • 5/5
      I discovered Catherine Ryan Hyde’s books maybe six months ago. Since then I’ve been more or less hooked on them. They tend to start out a little bit slow so if your new reader to her books, just hang in there for a few chapters, they’re very enjoyable.
    • 5/5
      Excellent wish it would covered 5 more years of Jody. Would like to have seen him growing with Virginia and Fern help.
    • 4/5
      Cute story with Happy Ending. Nice light reading/listening for all ages.
    • 5/5
      I love every single book I have read by Hyde....I'm working my way through all of them but I hope I don't catch up anytime soon. Each story is full of wonderful relationship developments. Really, I hate to come to the end of each one.....
    • 4/5
      Buddy (Jody) is only four years old when a horrific accident takes away his father, Aaron, within a year of his mother passing away. The night of the accident, Aaron had taken Buddy to a local diner, where Aaron was starting to fall in love with a waitress named Virginia. Although Virginia tries to find Buddy after the accident, she is unable to do so because his grandparents from Florida took Buddy away from the area. Years later, Virginia has still not gotten over Aaron, but tentatively becomes engaged to Lloyd, an unemployed loser. Unbeknownst to Virginia, Lloyd steals Virginia's dog and abandons him far out in the country on the coldest night of the year, since he feels it is beneath him to compete with a dog for Virginia's attention. Buddy (now Jody) is an unstable and awkward young man taking care of his demented grandfather near the town where he grew up. Jody watches Lloyd abandon the dog and drive away and decides to keep the dog as his own, renaming him "Worthy". As Virginia searches everywhere for her missing dog, she eventually crosses paths with Jody, now all grown up but without any memory for Virginia or the tragic accident that occurred many years ago. I really enjoyed this heartwarming and memorable story. The characters were well developed and the dogs were heroic. #Booksparks #SRC2015
    • 3/5
      What are each of us worthy of? We are worthy of life and happiness, love and connection. But saying that and truly knowing that deep down in our bones can be difficult. The characters in Catherine Ryan Hyde's newest novel are really grappling with the many facets of worth and what they feel they themselves are worthy of. Virginia is a waitress at a diner set a bit off from town. She and Aaron, a diner regular who is a widower with a four year old son, have tiptoed around starting a relationship for a while but that hasn't stopped Virginia from fantasizing about a life with this kind man and his sweet child. When Aaron finally asks her on a date and they share their first kiss, it seems as if they are on the road to just what Virginia wants. But a terrible tragedy later that night robs them of that future. Fast forward nineteen years. Virginia has never forgotten Aaron and little Buddy but she is now engaged to Lloyd. She and her friend Fern are now the owners of the diner they've worked at for so many years. Fern doesn't understand why Virginia is going to marry Lloyd, who is a not very nice person and a lazy lay-about, and she convinces Virginia to really think about her intentions. Jody is a young man in his early twenties living with his grandfather in a remote cabin in the woods. He's socially awkward and incapable of reading others. His grandfather suffers from dementia so Jody is all on his own taking care of him. When he sees a man in a red pick-up truck dump a dog out in the woods and then drive away during the coldest part of winter, he is horrified and takes the dog in as his own, renaming him Worthy. When he sees pictures of Worthy posted around town as a lost dog, he doesn't respond, figuring the owner doesn't deserve the dog. But Worthy is actually Virginia's dog, T-Rex, who was abandoned by Lloyd in a malicious act that clarifies his character for Virginia when she discovers it and Virginia is missing the dog something fierce. When they each discover the truth about the dog they love, Virginia and Jody forge a tentative connection. Worthy has led the two of them, both needing a friend, to each other. Virginia is a dreamy, pie in the sky kind of character. She's so desperate to be loved that she is willing to settle for someone like Lloyd, who could abandon her beloved dog to die. She has never let go of her image of the perfect life she could have led with Aaron and Buddy, still mourning and idealizing the past nearly two decades on. Jody is uncomfortable with others, emotionally isolated, and clearly damaged by his upbringing. He is skittish and doesn't understand basic human interaction and his plan to live alone and without a job after his grandfather dies and the small pension check they get every month is completely unrealistic. Jody is an odd duck. Both of these characters were a little bit frustrating, living so outside reality and the feel good resolution to whose dog T-Rex/Worthy will be comes across as just a bit too much. The grand coincidence of the novel was never a surprise but I actually found myself hoping that Hyde wouldn't take the easy way out instead letting Fern's insightful statement to Virginia stand. Although it ultimately didn't work for me, many people will probably enjoy this idealized, if unrealistic, novel about moving on after tragedy and loss and the healing power of connection and love.
    • 3/5
      A special thank you to Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Nice cover. Catherine Ryan Hyde’s WORTHY is a lighthearted, simple yet painful story of a sensitive mentally challenged little boy, and a lonely adult woman, both connected by their love of one lovable dog--a past, a loss, a tragedy, and memories which forever changes the course of their lives.Aaron is a raising a four year old son, Buddy with fears of everything. He has phobias, and does not interact well on a social level. He loves his dog named Shelia and does not do well with bridges. Virginia works at a nearby diner and has fallen for Aaron, and his little boy. She has her heart set on future dates with this man, a life, and can see herself being a step mom to little Buddy. One night when leaving the diner, a tragedy occurs and the sweet family Virginia had planned comes to an end, as quickly as it began. When she tries reaching out to the boy, his grandparents have come to take him away and she has no way to find him. The grandparents are not very caring people and everything Buddy has known is gone. Heartbroken, Virginia gets on with her life, buys the diner with her friend, Fern and later at age fifty-seven settles for a loser guy and is engaged to marry. This guy is jealous of her dog, and takes the dog off to the woods to get rid of him while she is at work. Of course she is frantic and searches everywhere for her dog.In the meantime, Aaron moves to Florida with his grandparents and they still have the cabin in the same town where the tragedy occurred. Aaron has had a rough childhood and now finds himself taking care of his elderly grandfather with dementia. Aaron is mentally challenged even at age twenty, with the mind of a child. Now he is left in a grownup world with big responsibilities when some mean man lets a dog off, in front of his house in the cold of winter to die. He will rescue this dog and make it his own. He will name it Worthy and no one will take it away from him. However, fate steps in and Virginia and Aaron connect again. With the shared love a one dog, may be just what the doctor ordered, for both these lost souls.An avid fan of Catherine Ryan Hyde for years, and a lover of Golden Retrievers (this dog was a mix); however, felt WORTHY was lacking in substance, and seemed a little juvenile and disconnected, more like a children’s book, than an adult fiction. May appeal to some readers; however, I need a little something more to stimulate my literary cravings with depth; a little too elementary, for my taste. I would recommend TAKE ME WITH YOU, landing on my Top Books of 2014.