The Purchase

The players

Daniel--the father
Rebecca--his wife who died in childbirth

Ruth Boyd--the orphan housekeeper taken as Daniel’s wife at 13 or 14
Mary--eldest daughter and surrogate mother to:
Isaac--9 years old
Benjamin--4 years old
Jemima--2 years old
Joseph--the baby

Miss Patch--a chestnut mare
Mulberry--a lesser lame mare

Tick--the cow

Onesimus--the slave, an inadvertent purchase at auction 13?


Ostracised by his Quaker community when a housekeeper remains under his roof after the death of his wife Daniel takes his family into Western Virginia by wagon.

Owning a slave presents problems for a Quaker not least of which are the moral issues. Simus breaks his leg needing the aid of a native healer from an adjoining farm. Then the girl gets pregnant those parts of the lad seemingly working just fine.

The book demonstrates the cruelty and injustice of slavery poisoning the lives of both owned and owner. It also points the finger at Christianity that observes the letter of the law but shows not love.

The Boundless

The Boundless is another fine product of Kenneth Oppel’s fertile imagination. Cornelius Van Horne, Donald Smith, and Sam Steele are historical figures and Smith’s flubbing of the Last Spike on the CPR line through the Rockies at Craigellachie were real events. Sasquatches remain mythical creatures and it is doubtful a single-engine train the length described ever made it through the inclines of the Rockies. Oppel is probably too young to have known that first class cars were normally placed at the rear of a train away from the noise, smoke and dirt of the engine and tender cars and the freight cars up front, the reverse of his description. The tension between a son’s dreams and a father’s expectations is a universal story.

All the Light We Cannot See

Begins in Jacques Cartier’s home of Saint-Malo, Brittany, France as the island fortress is about to bombed into oblivion. Having begun near the ending the book retraces its steps to document the lives of people resident on the island at the time. There are two principal characters, blind Marie-Laure, daughter of a museum curator in Paris; and Werner who with his sister Jutta is a German orphan. It seems to be out of fashion to tell a story from beginning to end these days. This one jumps regularly from childhood memories to adulthood and points in between and from place to place. Somehow it is easier to follow than most I’ve read lately. What is most poignantly evident here is the utter futility of war and the unspeakable things people will do to survive. Living or dying is random. The story is well told, the content can be rather harrowing.

Wild

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Setting out on a strenuous 1100-mile wilderness trek as a means of finding oneself seems a rather capricious thing to do. If nothing else one will find out things about oneself. Muscles you didn’t know you had, blisters and calluses, and aches that shouldn’t appear until decades hence. As one who walked for a living it amazes me that people who have never walked any distance on flat ground or camped in other than an organized park set out on these challenging treks. Little wonder emergency staff frequently have to rescue these less than intrepid hikers.

The book begins by introducing us to the writer’s family and spends the first chapter describing her Mother’s death from Cancer. A 22-year-old doesn’t expect to be burying her 44-year-old mother. The next four years it would seem disappeared in a haze before jumping off in the Mojave Desert. Five hundred miles on and 70 pages from the end of the book the lass is at a rest area along the trail tarted up and looking for casual sex.

The author rages at her mother for dying, for the mistakes she made in life, all the while making many of the same. These passages are not the strongest sections of the book. She looks at a handsome male and can’t seem to resist fantasizing sex with him. The fact that men find her attractive seems to re-enforce her sense of self-worth. Or to put it another way her self-esteem is at a low ebb.

The 323-page book is well-edited and for the most part eminently readable. Once the reader gets started the text seems to flow. Your personal feelings about casual sex will colour your opinions about the book, I expect my own are obvious.