Title: Shelter
Review: Another tear jerk-er for sure. The story started out with a bit of foreshadowing
and I knew it wasn’t going to be a happy go lucky type of book. The picture the author paints is of a family
that has problems, but for the most part works them out and continues to enjoy
their relationships. Of course the point
of view is that of one of the children so memories surface from time to time of
other then happy moments. Other moments that
leads the reader to believe that everything wasn’t as it seemed.
The pacing was great until the second half where it
slowed a bit with letters that pushed the story ahead. The letters I felt slowed the story down, but
it did give the reader vital information they would have missed without
them. Love and loss are part of life. It
just seems that some people get the short end of the straw more often than
others. No indoor plumbing in the late
1960’s WOW, I wouldn’t like living in the bush.
But that wasn’t their biggest problem by far.
I enjoyed this book and the ending was bitter
sweet. I cried and I laughed and I
thought about my relationship with my sisters.
Would we have been able to depend on each other in this same
situation? That is a tough one having
never faced such challenges as the two girls in this book do. If you enjoy beautifully written tales of
growing up, love, loss and depending on those closest to you, you will love
this book.
Publisher: Expected publication: May 15th 2012
by Free Press (first published August 23rd 2011)
Copyright: 2011
Pages: 376
ISBN: 9781451661101
Quick Review: 4 Stars out of 5.
Where Did I Read the Book:
Sent by the publisher
for review.
Synopsis: For sisters Maggie and
Jenny growing up in the Pacific mountains in the early 1970s, life felt nearly
perfect. Seasons in their tiny rustic home were peppered with wilderness hikes,
building shelters from pine boughs and telling stories by the fire with their
doting father and beautiful, adventurous mother. But at night, Maggie—a born
worrier—would count the freckles on her father’s weathered arms, listening for
the peal of her mother’s laughter in the kitchen, and never stop praying to
keep them all safe from harm. Then her worst fears come true: Not long after
Maggie’s tenth birthday, their father is killed in a logging accident, and a
few months later, their mother abruptly drops the girls at a neighbor’s house,
promising to return. She never does. With deep compassion and sparkling prose,
Frances Greenslade’s mesmerizing debut takes us inside the devastation and
extraordinary strength of these two girls as they are propelled from the quiet,
natural freedom in which they were raised to a world they can’t begin to
fathom. Even as the sisters struggle to understand how their mother could
abandon them, they keep alive the hope that she is fighting her way back to the
daughters who adore her and who need her so desperately. Heartbreaking and
lushly imagined, Shelter celebrates the love between two sisters and the
complicated bonds of family. It is an exquisitely written ode to sisters,
mothers, daughters, and to a woman’s responsibility to herself and those she
loves.
Author
Biography: I
was born in the Niagara Peninsula and grew up playing in the orchards and
vineyards around our family's hobby farm. I can remember climbing under the
thickest cover of grape vines to read and write stories in the long grass
there. I wrote my first novel at age 10 when we moved to Winnipeg. The story
involved an attic,a girl and a mystery. I still have a fascination with attics
and abandoned houses today. In fact they haunt me in recurring dreams.
I'm
also fascinated with the idea of home and shelter and how our mothers are our
first "home." My first two books are A Pilgrim in Ireland and By the
Secret Ladder, both non-fiction memoirs.
My
latest book is a novel, Shelter, about two sisters whose mother suddenly leaves
them to billet with a family friend in a small BC town, telling them she's
going to cook in a logging camp and then doesn't return.
Other Reviews: The Star , Stirling Observer, National Post
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