Rocketgirl's Full Review: David Baldacci - Wish You Well
If you've read books by David Baldacci before, this book is unlike his usual fare. He generally writes book of suspense, sometimes political, sometimes crime, all intriguing. This book is much different. It could almost be classified as an "Oprah" book in that it is a feel-good story, a "day-in-the-life" type tale, with a happy ending. I don't usually have much interest in that type of story as they tend to not have much of a plot. But because I have enjoyed Baldacci's other books, I took a chance on this one. Also, the jacket description promised a courtroom battle, so I figured it was at least somewhat along the lines of this usual books. I found that the courtroom battle only takes about 50 pages and is just a tool to bring about the happy ending.
Louisa (Lou) Carpenter and her brother Oz live in New York. Her father is a famous writer. One day, they get in a car wreck and their father is tragically killed and their mother left in a semi-comatose state. The children cannot care for themselves (Lou is 12 and Oz is 7) and so are sent to live with their great-grandmother Louisa in a small town in Virginia. This is the 1930s, during the coal producing days of Virginia towns. Their mother goes with them, though she is unable to care for herself and lies in bed and does not acknowledge that she knows who her children are.
Louisa and Oz find life much different and very challenging on this Virginia mountain. They do not have electricity, or running water, or a telephone. Their toilet is outside. They only have a fireplace for heat. All their food is grown on their farm in the form of crops and chickens and hogs. The children are up from dawn to dusk tending to their chores. They attend a country school, where they are first treated very rudely. Lou is tough though and knocks down the class bully.
They meet Diamond Skinner, a 14 year old homeless boy who's dad was killed in the coal mines. He is their best friend and teaches them the ways of the mountains. They have their friend Eugene, a young black man who lives with Louise and helps her with chores and drives their car. Their friend Cotton Longfellow is a local lawyer, who visits to help take care of their mom and later defends them in the court battle. And of course there is Louisa, their great-grandmother who always wanted to know them, but their father never returned home to his roots, which he had always written about.
Three-fourths of the book is mainly a story of how hard the life is and the relationships they form with other people. As I mentioned, this is not usually the type of book I would even bother with. But because of the skilled writing and the empathy I would have with basically homeless children, I was compelled to read on to find out what happens to them. The children are portrayed very sympathetically and realistically. A tough girl and a sweet boy, whose most important possession is a teddy bear that he leaves behind at a wishing well, in hopes that his mother will get better.
Baldacci does very good job giving the reader a sense of the time and place. He uses dialogue that is surely that of largely uneducated people, but very open, honest, and straightforward. No beating around the bush. His setting is the boom and bust times of coal towns. Not much different than gold rush towns in the west, though they had a tendency of lasting longer. He does a good job of showing the contrast between New York and Dickens, Virginia, through the eyes of the children. Going to town for an ice cream grows to be a real treat for them. Their friend Diamond had never even had ice cream or seen a moving picture.
If you read the cover blurb and picked up the book because you like courtroom stories, you'll be disappointed because that is not really what the book is about. Its just another event in the children's lives. It does have great significance for them, but not in the usual sense. I won't reveal just how since it would spoil what is really almost a tear-jerking (if unrealistic) ending.
So if you're patient and like historical period pieces, this book is for you. You won't get a twisting and turning plot, but you will get a sense of what life was like in a specific historical time for children who came upon hard times. I enjoyed it very much.
Precocious 12-year-old Louisa Mae Cardinal lives inthe hectic New York City of 1940 with her family.Then tragedy strikes--and Lou and her younger brot...More at HotBookSale
It is 1940 and a tragedy sends two young children, Lou and Oz, along with their invalid mother, from New York City to the rugged mountains of Southwes...More at Buy.com
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