About book May The Road Rise Up To Meet You (2012)
I loved this book. It was beautifully written and historically researched. But, best of all was the privilege of walking with four unforgettable characters as they journey through 20 years of their lives. Lives which were all so impacted by living during the Civil War. Three were gifted individuals born of humble circumstances who through the suffering in their lives developed their talents and walked with such integrity and grace. In spite of their good character or because of it, they were sometimes overwhelmed by their failures and humanness. They could only focus on the sins of their actions or regret the neglect of what they might have done. And, there was the one character born into wealth who was driven by noble passions and turned away from the life of leisure she was entitled to. It is lovely how the author weaves these lives together and in the end they create a beautiful tapestry. This was a thoroughly engaging, epic saga spanning a single generation of four people whose lives parallel each other in some ways, and eventually come together in a satisfying ending. I loved the way the author literally "wove" history, literature, and drama together to create a beautiful, nearly completely believable story against the backdrop of the Irish Potato Famine, immigration, and the US Civil War. He knows his history, and he knows his literature. It's a great combination.I read somewhere that every modern story is in effect another "Odyssey," yet none can quite compare with the original. I really liked how the author blatantly created the Odyssey for his characters in this book. Maybe it's because it's my favorite piece of literature, I don't know. Funny, when I picked up this book at the library, never having heard of it, I wondered if he was obsessed with Homer, given his last name. And I think I was right.I really want to give this book 5 stars but I have to wait and see how long it stays with me. Will it be a book that I want to read again? Will I want to talk to others about it? Will it keep nagging at me to reconsider the themes? For now, I give it 4.5 stars. The writing was superb, the story nearly perfect. I say "nearly" because I did have a few issues:One: In general, Irish immigrants were not abolitionists. They fought for the Union in the Civil War for pride, for valor, for many other reasons, but the Irish were known to be at odds with blacks prior to the Civil War. So having four Irishmen (okay, 3 and a Scotsman) who were in the Irish Brigade and yet against slavery was a bit unbelievable. Two: Marcella. We don't read much about Spanish immigrants in New York. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I was surprised she wasn't Italian. That's something I'll have to look up, but most Spanish immigrants went to the Southwest or California, where the Spanish missionaries settled, not where the Protestant English settled. Just sayin'.I do highly recommend this book. I loved his use of dialect-- just enough to hear the voices, yet not so much that it made it unreadable.
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Engrossing story told by a very talented author.
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