When her father gives eighteen-year old Lucy Davenport to Holman Carpenter as a bride in exchange for a mysterious favor, her life changes forever. Holman takes her from her isolated Georgia life to his farm in the North Carolina mountains to care for his thirteen children.
Woven from stories she heard from her grandmother, the real Lucy Davenport, Eva McCall has given us a spirited account of family life in the Great Smoky Mountains during the late 1800s.
Rural life then was always threatened by the seasons: flash floods, weeks of freezing & intense summer heat. Pioneers were often held hostage to rampaging diseases, constant poverty & secretive loners hidden in the wild lands all about.
It took the first chapter to become accustomed to Lucy's style of talking & thinking; rather like getting used to someone with a heavy accent & an old-fashioned vocabulary. Once I'd attuned my ears to the lilt & style of the way everyone spoke, the story flowed right along.
Edge of Heaven is a primitive book the way I look at a Grandma Moses painting & call it primitive. I suggest you let go of your modern, urban ways of looking at life & take a quiet, intense saunter into this other place, other time.
A good simple read, like a good simple breakfast. Easily digested, not nearly enough detail yet for all, very satisfying. Don't expect anything other than the everyday drama of a young woman searching for affection & a place to belong.
Edge of Heaven is romantic, scary, sad, funny & inspirational. Rather like catching sight of the dew on fresh spring grass as the sun rises.
Soon to be published from Eva McCall: Button Box & Children of the Mountain
(09/10/00)
Rebecca
Books make great gifts: no calories, carbs or cholesterol!
RebeccasiReads.com
