Riding on a Rainbow
Judi Blaze
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1420804219

Descendants of Irish Travelers see the 1950s fly by from inside a jet black Hudson.

Riding On A Rainbow as a multi-layered memory of nomadic families living high & low on America's new highways.

We follow Maggie, Alex & Helen, who they adopted from a childhood of foster homes, as they travel with their father & mother following work, watching the kids grow. From California to Montana & back with the seasons until the day their father cannot work anymore, until he dies, & they come to a standstill.

Then it's on to college & other states, on to love, marriage, babies & separations. Each of them struggling with the yearning to be back on the road, where life seemed so much simpler, happier. Back & forth the stories of hard choices, sad choices unfold along with the 1960s.

Riding On A Rainbow starts out strong, rolling along the highways & memories, & then when the family can no longer roam, it settles into a dirge of disappointment & happiness lost as the three nomads try to cope with staying in one place. As with Judi Blaze's first book, On Indian Time, it's all about relationships, struggle & surviving desparate lives.

This complex tale about a unique traveling group of people will entrance armchair-bound readers even with the occasional errors which are par for an AuthorHouse publication.
(05/22/05)

Rebecca