Charles Davis (1)

This story is about someone who gets hit so hard by life that life no longer makes sense to him. He needs to unravel the mystery of what happened, why, and in doing so the character finds a new life and of course changes during the journey. Life tends to hit everyone in the back of the head like a shovel now and then so I could relate a little bit to Ben's struggle...things like when he realized Amanda didn't even remember anything about the letter (that he held onto the 21 years he was away at prison).He realized that life moves on, she had moved on with her life, and he hadn't. And he needed to. For the past twenty years he'd been surviving, but living in the past. It was time to grow up and get going with the rest of his life.… (altro)

Summary: Eleven-year-old Charlie York has lived all of his life in a small town in southwestern Virginia. However, Sunnyside no longer feels like home - not since his dad died from a shotgun wound to the stomach. His mother claims it was an accident, but no one believes her, and she's brought to trial for murder. While she's awaiting her trial, Charlie stays in his house with an eighty-seven-year-old black man named Lacy Coe. The people of Sunnyside aren't pleased with this arrangement, however, and Charlie has to deal with racism, loneliness, and his growing suspicions concerning his mother, a wild loner named Hollis Thrasher, and the horrible night his father died.

Review: I'm pretty familiar with the area of southwestern Virginia where this novel is set, and it's pretty firmly rooted in its setting. Angel's Rest becomes the name of the mountain instead of the name of the overlook on Pearis Mountain, but otherwise, this book could easily have been set in Pearisburg or one of the surrounding small towns in the late 1960s - names of towns, streams, and people are pulled from existing natural features. One of the best things about this book is how authentically it captures poor small-town life in the area - the voices are real, the characters and settings all breathe with real vitality. Thematically, this book reminded me of a combination of Gwyn Hyman Rubio's Icy Sparks, Jane Hamilton's A Map of the World, and To Kill a Mockingbird. The plot, of a murder mystery in a small town combined with a young boy's coming-of-age, is not a particularly original one, although it's well told, and I figured out the "mystery" long before it was revealed. The worst part was the epilogue, in which an adult Charlie sums up everything that had just happened, stripping the rest of the book of any hope of subtlety it had possessed, and beating home the moral of the story, just to make sure WE ALL GET IT, and in the process turning it into more of a dead horse than it needed to be. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Not a bad read, although nothing particularly outstanding, either. Best part is the authentic local flavor, but it's not something I'm particularly likely to want to revisit any time soon.… (altro)