Across the Wide River 3: Weak points

Strength and weakness are often different sides of the same coin, and Stephanie Reed's Across the Wide River is no exception. So this post will be a mirror-image or Devil's Advocate version of yesterday's in many respects.

Character. I don't think most kids these days are used to character-driven stories. Character is an incidental matter; action generally drives things. Now, there is action in Across the Wide River, usually to do with a slave escape, but it's mostly about character development, in this case Lowry's shyness. If you don't understand that, the ending is going to hit you like a brick wall beyond a door: you'll have a sudden, jolting stop for no reason. But from the standpoint of a character-driven story, the end has arrived, and Reed evidently doesn't believe in loitering. (As I mentioned yesterday, fans of Austen or the Brontës will probably get into this: those older stories were strongly character-driven.)

Life choices. Lowry's wavering about his eventual career does get a bit tedious. It's realistic, but so is a couple guys on a couch trading "What do you want to do?"/"I dunno" dialog. Sometimes you can see where a choice leads, but in other cases it seems pointless. Mind you, this is totally sane and gripping compared to some of the stuff the kids will read in college or even a college-prep class.

If I were Lowry... One thing that bothered me about Lowry is that he seemed to think only an abstract argument could answer the pro-slavery side. Rubbish. The pro-slavery argument at its strongest emphasized needs: the need of the Blacks for a support system, given their lack of education or advanced work skills (though of course that lack was not an accident but part of the system), and the need of the local economy for cheap labor. Absent the cheap labor, the economies of many areas and states would be ruined, causing innocent (White) people to suffer. As I mentioned recently, the power of experiential apologetics is great, usually greater than that of an abstract argument, and I've found it emboldening. Instead of trying a generalized argument about suffering, Lowry could have said, "I have seen human beings tortured; I have seen perversion being thrust upon the innocent"--and given examples. That's what Harriet Beecher Stowe did in Uncle Tom's Cabin: she gave examples, and they rang true. This point comes up in the sequel, The Light Across the River, which I'll post about tomorrow.

Conclusion. While there are some problem areas, overall this is a good and timely book. I've heard people say that it isn't fast enough for kids, and I would say it's fast enough for any kid who isn't really slow. (If we keep pandering and lowering the bar, we might as well anticipate the trend and go back to painting on cave walls.) But I have more confidence in kids; I think they have the class for something like this. And by recognizing the horror and heroism of a bygone age, perhaps they will be better equipped to be heroes against the horrors of this age.

Tomorrow we'll look at the sequel, The Light Across the River.

In the meantime, is there more on the CFRB tour? You bet your buttons! Or better yet, try mine:

Across the Wide River 2: Good points

I mentioned yesterday that Stephanie Reed's Across the Wide River has enough actual history to qualify as edutainment. There's also some other info for us geeks to enjoy--fiddly bits about life in the eighteen hundreds. But what about non-geeks?

Character. Since this is a character-driven story, character development is a big issue--and shyness is a big issue for a lot of people. (Not just kids!) Some people might be bothered that there's no quick fix offered: Lowry changes with increased perspective, otherwise known as age. But it's good for people to know they aren't alone in their problems, and a quick fix would trivialize the issue. ("If you were as smart as I am, you would've figured this out too!")

Life choices. On a related note, Lowry takes a while to figure out--well, not what he's supposed to do, but that he's going to do it. It's one thing to know God's will; it's something else to do it. I think a lot of people who complain about not knowing God's will actually want a reset on the part they do know.

Back to Abolitionism. We tend to think that slavery is a thing of the past, but it still occurs in several parts of the world. For that matter, using human fetuses for research is worse than normal chattel slavery, as there is no escape but death. So long as the US believes that it is acceptable to buy and sell human beings, we will not only give up the moral high ground in dealing with more old-fashioned slavers, we risk judgment. It helps to remember how dehumanizing slavery is to both slave and owner, and this story makes that point. Even a "good" master may have to do bad things with and to his slaves.

Learning from history. It's possible that the anti-life policies we're seeing these days will call for civil disobedience. In a story I once plotted, health-care costs were used as an excuse to require unborn children with birth defects to be aborted, resulting in a kind of Underground Railroad for pregnant women. What would we do in such a case? Perhaps the best answer lies in our past, with the people now generally recognized as heroes.

Concision. I nearly forgot to include this craft note, though it was one of the first things I noticed: Reed doesn't go rabbiting on and padding the story. In general, if something doesn't advance plot, character, or setting (setting being nearly as important as character), she doesn't dwell on it. So the cholera epidemic I mentioned last time would probably take up three fraught yet needless chapters for another writer, but here gets as many paragraphs, since the main point is who died. A fair amount of the story maintains this Spartan ethic, which is refreshing after all the Baroque excrescences other authors wallow in.

Tomorrow we'll look at the weak points of the story.

In the meantime, is there more on the CFRB tour? You bet your buttons! Or better yet, try mine:

Across the Wide River 1: Intro

Stephanie Reed's Across the Wide River tells the story of Lowry Rankin, a boy on the first station of the Underground Railroad, and his struggle to overcome his extreme shyness and become an abolitionist minister like his father.

After Lowry's slave friend is nearly killed by a savage beating, Lowry's father moves "across the wide river" from Kentucky to Ohio--a "free" state, though not altogether free for slaves. The Rankin farm becomes the first station on the Underground Railroad, with a light in the window beckoning to slaves across the river to flee to freedom--not in Ohio proper, which is only the first stage, but ultimately in Canada, where they will be tolerated and not enslaved.

Lowry finds himself an outsider both because of his father's outspoken views and his own Kentucky accent, and the sleepless nights of helping out runaway slaves make matters worse. Then there are the moments of typical nineteenth-century fun such as a cholera epidemic...

Across the Wide River is a character-driven story with a heavy emphasis on setting--not just the physical setting but the attitudes common at the time and the events that shaped them. The historical aspect has been well researched, so the story constitutes edutainment, though the fact that it's more character driven than event driven may be problematic for the high-speed chase crowd. (On the other hand, the Jane Austen crowd should do okay, and even the Harry Potter people may get by.) This is not to say there is no suspense: there's no shortage of Bad Stuff happening, and since the Rankins are breaking the law by helping the slaves, even more Bad Stuff is poised to dump on them if they slip up. For that matter, Lowry's own psychological impediment may keep him not only from his career destiny but from the woman he loves. Will he get a grip and learn to speak up?

Tomorrow we'll look at the strengths of the story.

In the meantime, is there more on the CFRB tour? You bet your buttons! Or better yet, try mine: