Blindfolded: a Free Book review

I did not think I'd like Earle Ashley Walcott's Blindfolded when it showed up on LibriVox. The description sounds a bit like an early version of Little Miss Marker. But it was one of Roger Melin's contributions, so I tried it anyway.

To begin with, I'll add to Melin's description. The kid doesn't tag along in typical adorable waif style. That's a relief, anyway. And our hero, Giles Dudley, is soon treated to a box seat at a murder. As a special added extra, he gets a good look at the murderer's face. He turns to the police and gets nowhere: they aren't about to go after the guy he saw.

So he vows vengeance, only to find himself swept up in someone else's scheme under another identity--one he can neither maintain perfectly nor dispose of without danger. Who is behind the scheme? What is it about? Why does the owner of the face he saw at the murder apparently want him to act as his confidential agent in stock manipulations? Who can he trust? We're all in the dark with him.

The plot twists sound as though they should be frustrating, especially when he picks up a romantic interest he cannot pursue and various people realize he isn't who he's supposed to be. But this is a well-plotted and paced story, and the maze does eventually resolve.

I like the story. It's not specifically Christian, though it is generally moral and ethical (moreso than some modern Christian fiction). There's an unexpected scene near the end that is very effective and scary--a kind of reverse deathbed conversion--that points in a Christian direction. And against the prejudices of its day, there's a pointed exposition of the fact that Asians do not all look alike--it's part of an overarching theme very important to the story, but that point aside, it's quite well done and a good counterpoint to a prejudice that still lingers to this day in some quarters.

I should mention that there is a fair amount of violence. It isn't particularly graphic or gory, but it is plentiful. There's a lot of action in general and suspense, too.

The scenes of stock market operations in the late 1800s are informative--you can trace the development of modern practices without much trouble. Also, the depiction of China Town in that era, though brief, is fairly well done.

All in all, it's worth a look, and Melin's audio version makes the text proper even more accessible for busy people.

Glengarry School Days: a free book review

Glengarry School Days was written by Ralph Connor in 1902. It's available both as an e-book and an audiobook.

The story is difficult to explain. There is no one main character, though there are only a few major characters, and the baton passes from one to another a few times. Yet I never felt lost in the story.

Simply put, however, it's about some kids at a rural school in Ontario in the mid-nineteenth century and how they interact and mature. The schoolmasters also figure prominently for good or ill.

It is a Christian story in the best possible sense: unlike much modern Christian fiction I've encountered, it is neither preachy nor worldly. It will inspire you to be better, to follow God more closely. It models the change that a few truly righteous people can make. We need more books like this, and I doubt we have the guts or skill to write them.

I will also recommend the audiobook in particular. I usually recommend a text, and I may find the reader(s) of the audio version tolerable. But Bruce Pirie is the perfect reader for this classic text, and the even better news is that he is now preparing another Ralph Conner story, The Man from Glengarry.

Even if this isn't your preferred genre--it surely isn't mine--this is worth reading, or better yet listening to.

Glengarry School Days:
E-book
Audiobook

The House of Arden: A Free Book Review

The House of Arden (free audiobook here) by Edith Nesbit is about a brother and sister who try to find an ancestral treasure so they can restore the ancestral home. All this naturally involves a magical white mole and a lot of time travel.

The setup is simple enough: Edred and Elfrida Arden live with their Aunt Edith (wink-wink, nudge-nudge), who seldom ridicules them for their names. Their dad has gone to South America with Uncle Jim (just Aunt Edith's fiancé thus far) to make a lot of money and be declared dead. Everyone needs a hobby.

Incidentally, Ardens are dropping like flies (everyone still needs a hobby), and Lord Arden's passing sends his title looking for an heir; with Papa Arden out of the way, it lands on Edred with the unerring accuracy of a cartoon piano. This means that Edred has a couple of days to find and utter a spell that will lead to the revelation of the long-lost family treasure. Plucky monkey that he is, he succeeds, but all he gets is a grumpy mole that tells him he needs some old-fashioned character development first. This can only mean a bunch of adventures.

And it's here that the story starts to wobble a bit. For one thing, we've already been told that each generation of Ardens conveniently features a boy and girl named Edred and Elfrida, respectively, whose place our pair manage to take in whatever time they appear. Then we encounter a nice old lady who is called a witch by superstitious rustics when she's really just really, really smart and does time travel and can summon the mole and--wait, she is a witch, though, isn't she? Hmm.

That's never clarified, unfortunately. The line between magic and really weird science is vague at best here, and perhaps what she does can be considered non-magical in terms of the story. But I doubt it--and that means the author has lied about the witch's nature, which is a no-no.

There is some good historical fiction in the adventures, which is a positive. But we also start generating lose ends. People turn up and are apparently important, but the arcs go nowhere. This becomes especially bad near the end, where several situations are set up only to evaporate, and in the end we get a Big Cosmic Lesson that is fine but contrary to the overall direction of the story.

In sum, I got the impression that Nesbit had a major change of personality while writing the story. In fact, there are a few places where the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next simply don't mesh. But the last chapter doesn't mesh with the rest of the book, and that's fatally bad. So while I'm generally a fan of Nesbit's work, I can't recommend this one.

The Light Across the River 3: Weak points and conclusion

So what are the weak points of Stephanie Reed's The Light Across the River?

Good question. There are some false negatives, as I call them: the characterization of Johnny and the portrayal of his mouthiness could be considered heavy-handed, for example--but not for a Young Adult book. Likewise, the ending may seem as abrupt as that of its predecessor, but not if you realize that the story hinges on character development.

Since I'm a geek for all seasons, I did wish she had given more historical background: she has a "Historical Note" mostly about the Eliza-Johnny connection, but I would've liked to know more specifics about her research; I was surprised how much was historically based. But my preferences reflect my post-grad status; the footnotes I'd like would sink the book for its YA audience. Still, since this will likely attract home schoolers, a more extensive study guide would help.

Conclusion. This is a short post at the end of a long day, but I really don't find serious flaws in the story. I recommend it and Across the Wide River, especially for the home school crowd. They aren't as long or as demanding as Uncle Tom's Cabin, but they can prepare young readers for that story, which would be a good follow-up.

You can purchase The Light Across the River at

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The Light Across the River 2: Good points

When I was in high school, our US history class had a role-playing exercise. As I recall, we were a community in the 1850s somewhere in the US that apparently had no specific law covering escaped slaves. (I find this doubtful now, but anyway...) And we happened to have an escaped slave turn up in our midst. What a stroke of luck!

Everyone had some kind of part to play, of course. I was the editor of an Abolitionist newspaper.

Now, the odd things were

1. Though practically all Abolitionists were devout Christians, there was no hint of that for my character, though I provided it, and

2. The local minister was rabidly pro-slavery.

There were pro-slavery ministers back then, as Stephanie Reed acknowledges in her books. But while the pro-slavery position was open to Christian and non-Christian alike, Abolitionism was dominated by Christians of some kind or other, and the major voices for freeing the slaves were at least sympathetic to Christianity and usually dedicated to that faith.

Why did our exercise ignore that fact?

Well, the simple (and probably accurate) answer involves the word "bigotry." If they're going to lie, we need to tell the truth loud and clear. I wish I had had Reed's books back then, but at least the current crop will have this resource. That's my first and probably strongest reason for recommending these two books.

(In case anyone's interested, since the minister was wanting to throw the slave to the wolves, I decided to out-Christian him: my argument was exclusively Biblical, and my opening text was Deuteronomy 23:15--"Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee." That's about as clear a proof-text as you could want. I was mildly surprised that it didn't turn up in Reed's first book, but it's in this one.)

Where The Light Across the River itself is concerned, the strengths are

Stronger focus. The first book had to establish the setting, and there were places where it lost focus as a result: although I technically knew Lowry was the main character, there were times when it was easy to forget that fact. Here, the focus is split between Johnny and Eliza, but so precisely that there's never any doubt. The marked contrast between Eliza and Johnny also helps.

More action. The Light Across the River is primarily character-driven, but there's more action and suspense throughout than in Across the Wide River, where the action came in lumps, so to speak.

More direct. The meandering tendency of the first story pretty well disappears.

More Christian. The Christian element here is stronger as well. While not absent from the first story, it wasn't as focused there and sometimes came across as generically spiritual or inspirational. Not so here.

(And tomorrow, as usual, I'll explore the story's weaknesses.)

You can purchase The Light Across the River at

Christian Books

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Target

And Yahoo.

I've pushed the book; let's see if you can push my buttons!

The Light Across the River 1: Intro

Stephanie Reed's The Light Across the River takes up where Across the Wide River left off, only now we see Lowry in a less sympathetic, indeed obnoxious, light. He's berating his younger brother Johnny for having the loosest lips before Mick Jagger. (Those familiar with the previous story will remember that Lowry's besetting problem was lockjaw.) Since the Rankin family has a dangerous secret--Reed explains the penalties for helping slaves escape quite thoroughly--a blabbermouth could cause a lot of misery and even some death here and there. And to make matters worse, Johnny doesn't even have anyone to tell about it.

Now, in Johnny's defense, he sincerely believes that if everyone knew the truth, they would rally to the good and abolish evil. This is technically known as "Why, yes! I will buy the Brooklyn Bridge" syndrome. A few brushes with people who are eager to be evil for a buck settles him a bit, as does a brush with a nice lady devoid of fashion sense.

Hands up, everyone who has read Uncle Tom's Cabin! Okay, I guess I'll include movie and comic-book versions just to nudge this toward double digits. You can download it as a free audio book, you know. Anyway--one of the most famous characters, even better known really than Uncle Tom himself, is Eliza (Indian name: Dances with Ice Floes), who crosses a broken ice field to elude slave hunters. For extra points, she carries a baby with her. She was based on a real, live slave.

Guess what?

In real life, this real escapee passed through the Rankin station of the Underground Railroad, so she becomes the second main character in the current story. In fact, she and Johnny alternate chapters as they get more and more involved in the dangerous world of rescuing slaves. (There is a lot more violence, threatened and actual, in this story.) She also brings along a token agnostic, a French Canadian who's with the Canuck navy, presumably as a Frog man. (Why, yes, that was gratuitous. Thanks for noticing.) He threatens to kill people a lot, but it's really just his way of saying he cares. Anyway, the new guy, Gil, would have been watching way to many action movies if they'd been invented yet.

Will Eliza get everyone to safety? Will Gil be eaten by a nearsighted Cajun? Will Johnny someday put a cork in it? For answers to these and other questions, read the book.

(And tomorrow, as usual, I'll explore the story's strengths.)

You can purchase The Light Across the River at

Christian Books

Amazon

Target

And Yahoo.

I've pushed the book; let's see if you can push my buttons!

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: