The Woodsman's Daughter

I sneaked a peek at the reviews on Amazon before adding this book to my list of 2008 reads. First of all, I found this book on the shelves of "R's" at the downtown Main branch held up as a favorite of the staff...staff pick. Happily I grabbed it because I loved "Icy Sparks" and I know that GHR lives in my hometown (which is also made a minor role in the book as a small town that the wife of the son hails from).

In my defense, I have been reading The Book Club in between the two listed books. I did not finish TBC but returned it day before yesterday half read. Could not relate to the characters blah blah blah.

This book...is not Icy Sparks. Somewhere in the middle of it I thought of Scarlet O'Hara and sure enough, it was mentioned in the other reviews.

I found little sympathy for the main character as a young girl and could not identify her bitterness for her father, since his "sin" was revealed only after 50 or 60 (maybe 100) pages of the first part of the book. I even felt sorry for the old geezer and felt his reluctance to return to his home. Why even go home? Why not make yourself a more comfortable home elsewhere? Say, in Millerown? Anyway, I did not understand the hostility between the daughters and father, and the father punishing himself to return to them. Despite the "I love you's" and the love making she heard through the walls.

I just did not like them. All but the Mammy character. I hated that the girl who was so flip and disrespectful to her father could not own up to setting the barn on fire but allowing Mammy to take the rap and to be banished from the home.

BTW, all this takes place after the Civil War around the turn of the century.

A study in the lives of women, Delia as a turn of the century woman, her daughter as a flapper, her mother as a Civil War survivor and drug addict and Mammy as a free born black woman, slave none the less.

I read it at break neck speed unable to put it down because the story flowed easily. No big words to look up or flabbergast me (as love in the time of cholera). Good story none the less, unsympathetic characters who' motivation was sketchy at worst, left to the imagination at best. Some characters were but mere ghosts coming into the story as a minor character in a play enters from stage right and exits stage left. I did enjoy the brief introduction of the old Aunt (where the hell did she come from? The Miller side or her mothers side? Where did she get the money to live high on the hog, unencumbered by having to marry to survive. Her mothers people became poor after the war, her fathers people were dirt poor and he was a self made man. Made little sense to me) who had an affair or fling with a scoundrel from Charleston...Rhett Butler of course!

Predicable what was going to happen.

I read Icy Sparks hears ago and loved it. Knew the author had been inspired by the Berea Writing Program and Icy Sparks was a prodigy of that program. Icy Sparks was her masterpiece, and this book is just a writing exercise to keep her chops greased until she finds another character like Icy.