Lessons from the Gypsy Camp
Elizabeth Appell
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2004 Scribes Valley Publishing
ISBN: 0974265217

A girl defies her county prosecutor father in order to save the life of a man accused of murder.

In 1955, Lolly has just made 10, summer is almost here & there's trouble in her home: her Daddy, the county prosecutor, is coming home from work everyday in a rage, & he's drinking himself stupid in front of the newfangled TV. Her beautiful Mommy has been ill now for what seems years with “head hammers” & depression. & Doc Pine has to visit her almost every day with his pills & injections. Since Grandmother Helen has died, Grandfather paints & gardens, & there is no love lost between him & his son-in-law, so he doesn't visit his daughter & granddaughter as much as they'd like.

School isn't any better: the nuns are unrelenting in their discipline, & the girls in the herd of horses Lolly wishes she could join, taunt her. When they do invite her to play, they make her be the “sick” horse, & then attack her. Rage roils up & Lolly spits at the lead girl. The nuns are appalled, punish her & call her Daddy.

Lolly's getting to know anger all too well. It fills her home as her Daddy & Mommy fight daily. Lolly thinks it would all go away so easily if her Daddy would drink milk instead of “horns of corn” (vodka), & spend a little time each evening talking to her, answering all her questions about life.

The way that anger starts coming out in Lolly is in defiance: with her Daddy & the nuns. One evening Lolly pleads with her Daddy to quit drinking, & she threatens him with cutting off her long, long braids. Of course her Daddy doesn't listen to her. So Lolly has to do it.

& that brings consequences, as her Daddy roars. He grabs the old family cat, stuffs him into a burlap bag, tosses it into the trunk of his car & orders his daughter into the passenger seat. Up on the nearby levee he throws the sack over the side. Old Bo tumbles screeching, down the steep side & vanishes into the gypsy camp. Even as Lolly is weak with despair, her rage rumbles inside.

One of the big “forbiddens” her Daddy has always commanded is that Lolly never, ever go over the levee to the gypsy trailer camp down beside the river. Now, Lolly knows she's going to have to go there, to find Bo & bring him home.

Who she finds in the gypsy camp changes everyone's lives. There is Tick, a wild girl her own age with a mother who knows where things are & is a healer. There's Sam, Bob Bob & Andrea & a host of fascinating people who welcome her with gladness, kind words & who think she's beautiful & clever. Suddenly, Lolly finds herself liked for who she is. Finds herself listened to.

After many sneakings over to the gypsy camp after school or in the night when her parents are sleeping, Tick takes her to see their “secret” -- a magnificent, wild cougar which they saved from a trap as a cub, & keep caged. Meeting Survie & getting to stroke him changes something in Lolly. & later, when Tick finds old Bo stretched out beneath a trailer, dead, something else shifts in Lolly: her anger against her Daddy turns into unforgiving hate.

Lessons from the Gypsy Camp is a gripping tale of family trouble, community prejudice, personal responsibility & the consequences of choosing to do the wrong or right thing.

I could not put Lessons from the Gypsy Camp down once I'd started. This is the first book I've read where it is a girl who must grow up during dangerous & mean times. She must learn how to tell the truth & what that telling will bring. She must learn about discretion & most of all how powerfully healing is being able to forgive.

Lessons from the Gypsy Camp is not at all what you think it will be -- a pretty, mild little book about a girl learning to grow up. It is filled with anger & adventure. It stares without blinking at the times in a small American town & at dysfunctional families; recreates prejudices without excuses, & describes danger, death, lying, cheating & meanness without flinching. & yet, throughout, there are glimpses of redemption by screwing up courage to do the right thing, in the face of a disapproving father & his cronies, despite a mother who has almost been drugged & battered into submission.

In the end Lessons from the Gypsy Camp is a tautly written tale with much to teach. It is memorable, raw & an everso good read!
(07/04/04)

Rebecca