Amazon
US $10.38 $13.95
Fictional saga / Coming of age
1900s
North America
Book One of the River Saga
‘On a southern
Nebraska prairie in 1919, in small-town Darkwater Creek, an abandoned housemaid
with vaudeville memories, a railroad magnate’s neglected son, and a runaway
Pawnee boy come of age where money is power, the right name brings privilege,
and the color of your skin can make you disappear.
Witnesses to
criminal tragedy, Margaret Rose, Jack and Kuruk gather in their riverside
treehouse for courage. Their love and loyalty are strong, but will the town’s
corruption divide them?
Seven Kinds of
Rain revives three unwanted children’s voices, a tall-grass prairie scarred by
railroad tracks, the mythic frontier’s fading heartbeat, and the violence that
stole the West.’
The author seems to have the research well defined,
with excellent detail and feel of a Nebraskan town in the early 1900s, where
prejudices, misconceptions and a will to merely survive from one day to the
next takes precedence.
Readers may find the alternating first/third person narrative
confusing, although the strategy is to highlight the difference between how adults
and children think, feel and view events. Once you become used to these
changes, though, the narrative reads well. The children in question, are from three
very different ‘social groups’: a Pawnee Indian, Kuruk, Margaret Rose, an
orphaned girl, and Jack, the highly privileged son of the town’s mayor. How
their lives intertwine, how they face the rigours, pleasures and tragedies of
life is an absorbing read – especially recommended for readers who have a
passionate interest in the early 1900s of American settlement and development –
both social and practical.
As a series it would be beneficial to read the books
in order, though. My only small comment is that maybe the e-book version is somewhat over-priced?
© Anne Holt
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