Wolf silent

     "All in all, I have a crazy ma'am who owns a hundred dusty Bibles, a leggy boy with a too-soft heart, and no man to bed down with. And an Alaskan silver dying on my kitchen floor."
     Thus does Olivia Harker, heroine of Carolyn Wall's fine novel Sweeping up Glass, sum up her life in rural Kentucky during the Depression. She's struggling to keep running her ramshackle general store with the help of her young grandson Will'm, and the hindrance of her elderly, volatile and vindictive mother Ida. Her adored father died forty years earlier, and that sent the young Olivia down roads she'd have done better to have avoided. But now, wolves are being shot and mutilated on her land, and she wants to know what's behind the apparently senseless killing. As she and Will'm take in some tiny motherless cubs and try to rear them, her investigations lead her to discover things about long ago events that she had never suspected.
     In a book about hard times and racial prejudice, this is storytelling at its best. Olivia's voice is strong and distinctive and that's what powers the narrative. In the parts about her early life I was reminded of Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird or Jody Baxter in The Yearling, for there's an ingenuous humour and unselfconscious charm to her. The older Olivia is battered but tough, loyal and loving, though she fancies no-one will ever love her again. But it's her easy, mutually respectful relationship with her black neighbours which is at the heart of the book, this at a time of segregation, hostility and violence. There are many dark scenes in it, but overall it's a strong, hopeful and uplifting book and I loved it.

Comments

[Danielle]

I loved To Kill a Mockingbird--I'll have to look for this one. I tend to not want to pick up books I know are dark in this way (deal with racial prejudice) but oftentimes they are excellent reads--if a little hard going.

[Samantha]

I have recently ordered this one from Amazon and am delighted to read that you loved it so.

[Tara]

This is the second great review of this I've read in the past day - this is sounding like a must-read for me!