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nicoleja's review
2.0
Although the author painted a clear picture of life in the South, I had no interest in finishing the book after about 3/4 of the way.
elvenavari's review
2.0
I'm not very crazy about stories written in dialect. I appreciate author's who use that device but I am not a fan. Overall the story was good but I wasn't a fan of how it was told from all the different character's point of view... it did flow well but... it just felt like a combination of a novel and a play.
dawneharley's review
4.0
Good book. Really started out well and got my attention. I kept reading to find out the answer to the mystery woman in the beginning. Got a little slow in some parts, but I'm glad that I finished it.
jmanchester0's review
4.0
Carbon Hill, AL isn't far from Jasper and Birmingham. This tale of a depression-era family living in rural Alabama, just trying to get by, dealing with finances, racism, and other issues of the day is quite a thought-provoking novel. If you're not thinking about classism, racism, and other -isms after reading it, you probably didn't read it close enough. Read it, let it sink in, and let it make you think about who you are and how you treat people.
mslaura's review against another edition
4.0
This story, set in a mining town in depression-era Alabama, is at once the story of a family and of a community, and of a mystery which touches them all. When a baby is put down their family's well by a mysterious woman in the night, 9 year old Tess and 14 year old Virgie set out to make sense of this event which has rocked the comfortable world they've come to know. Along the way come lessons about social class, race, respect for others, growing up and finding one's place in the world. The story is told in the voices of Tess, Virgie and their parents, Albert and Leta, each of which I found distinctive and generally believable. Jack, the youngest member of the family, also does some narration, though his is from an adult perspective and is much broader in scope, covering events years down the road from the immediate story, which I felt was an interesting addition. A very nice read and definitely recommended.
jhaagens's review
3.0
I liked the story but the narrative perspective changed so often (sometimes multiple times in a single chapter), it was almost distracting.
selenajournal's review
4.0
After she threw the baby in, nobody believed me for the longest time. But I kept hearing that splash. (Tess, pg 1)
The sun was strong, and I was calmed by the heat, the sweat. Amazing the difference between the smell of the earth, warm and moist, full of cucumbers and tomatoes, watermelon and corn, compared to barren dirt, ripe with only black rock. I loved sucking up great breaths of that growth and green - full-sized lungfuls of peas and squash and soil instead of careful, shallow sips always testing for a pocket of after damp or black damp, one of the stranglers. -pg 43
None of the operators wanted to do a thing for you. Living in their big houses with maids and gardeners, cream in their coffee and roast chicken whenever they wanted, they could empty out the change in their pockets and pay a crippled man a year's wages. But they didn't. Could be money was a sickness that spread through their veins, but they couldn't ever have enough. They'd let a man die from bad mine construction, with his wife and children looking forward to starving as soon as the funeral was over, and they'd no more than toss a bill or two on the coffin. Hearts choked off, no feeling at all. Like a women who could kill her own child. We couldn't do nothing about them. But we might could do something about her. -pg 53
I wanted my well and my creek and my dreams back. Some nights, sitting out there on the porch by the well, I'd thought that view was the most beautiful, perfect thing in the world. And the more I thought about the baby, the uglier everything got. I wanted to stop thinking about it altogether. -pg 60
The woods started at the edge of the creek, and the sound of moving water blocked out the sound of birds until I got deep into the trees. Then the ground was speckled with shadows and leaves and sometimes sunshine, and my shoes made loud sounds that made me feel like I didn't belong. But if I was still, I could be compltely quiet, and I could sink into the woods, maybe lean against a tree or sit down on a flat rock with no moss or bugs. I could hear pecans or hickory nuts hit the ground. No one else there. No one watching, no one listening. I liked the woods best when I could be alone. -pg 66
Grandma Moore had separated from Grandpa Moore before I was born, leaving him in Fayette and moving here to a house Papa bought her. That was the first house she ever lived in that was her very own. And Grandpa Moore's mother had divorced her husband and changed her name and all the kids' names back to her maiden name. That's why we were Moores. He must've done something awful to make her want to go out and not just erase him out of her life, but erase his name, too. Whatever he did, if he hadn't done it, we'd all be named Adams. -pg 68
With boys and most grown-ups, you ended up feeling like they were holding up some yardstick to you. I didn't like being measured was all. -pg 69
When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
-pg 79
1873 hymn written by Horatio Spafford, used in the context in the book as a hymn the girls like, in church, as they're looking around for who which woman may have killed their child
For years I thought of her sweetness as written there in the darkness of her eyes, the softness of her mouth. Remembered--imagined?--that from that first night, I knew her small hands would mend a pain in my neck as sure as a swig of whiskey, that the crook of her elbow would fit a baby like God had carved it purely for that purpose. -pg 103
In church we learned about Cain and Abel. Abel tended the flock and Cain worked the soil, and the Lord preferred Abel's offerings of fat firstborn animal sacrifices to Cain's offerings of vegetables. (Even as a teenager, Tess would keep on about that passage all the way home from church - "Do you think God would like squash? Do you think Cain got in all that trouble just because God was allergic to green beans or some such?" And eventually Papa would tell her to hush because she was being sacrilegious, and he'd try to keep his mouth from twitching. But Cain was jealous that the Lord favored Abel, and he killed his brother. The Lord heard Abel's blood cry out to him from the ground, and he cursed Cain to wander ceaselessly across the earth. And to make sure that Cain wasn't killed before he got in a life's worth of wandering, God put the Mark of Cain on him. -pg 118
(The next passage talks about how this was used the Sunday school teacher to explain race relations and prejudice - ascribing Blackness as the Mark of Cain.
She goes on to say: "There was ugliness to it, too, I didn't miss that, but church was full of ugly things - blood and crucifixion and thorns and swords and ears lopped off - that were part of God's perfect plan. -pg 118
An educated old maid was the worst of all, bottom of the list. Aunt Celia said no man wanted a woman who cared more about books than she did about him. When I was learning long division, the numbers all swam together and I hated it. Aunt Celia said then that it didn't pay to be too smart, that it wouldn't serve me well anyhow. I figured out long division anyway, partly because that made me mad, and partly because when I repeated it to Papa, he said, "It don't pay to be too stupid, neither." -pg 140
I never liked sermons about this world being just a train stop. It had always seemed like a pretty nice place to me, with magnolias and chocolate cake and baby chicks. But it could be that I'd missed something important, that really the earth was a place as full of hatefulness and danger as the preacher said. -pg 151
Mama's sister Emmaline died at eighteen, and Aunt Merilyn named her youngest daughter for her. That daughter's granddaughter named her youngest daughter Emmaline. When the family and friends packed into a tiny maternity-ward room in Boston, Massachusets, in 2004, text-messaging the good news while they waited their turn to tug at the fingers of a dark-headed baby, they were touching some part of a girl who died quietly on top of a handmade quilt in 1906. -pg 162
Ever since that baby died, pieces didn't fit together as well as they used to. Some things were convoluted before, of course. Papa was the strongest man in the world, so of course nothing could hurt him, but he was cracked all over from the mines. God was good, but he might decide to send you to hell. Getting baptized in the river cleaned your soul, but I still had to take a bath on Saturday nights even if I'd just been swimming. -pg 173
But usually I tried to ignore it when the pieces didn't come together quite right, even when something big and heavy poked at the edge of my mind and tried to shove its way in. Especially then. -pg 173 (next paragraph after the above)
I didn't want to live in some far-off place or do some remarkable thing. And I didn't want this. I didn't want to give every last speck of energy to my husband and houseful of kids and have no ime at all for any pleasure of my own. I wanted something left for myself. ALl that was left was to figure out what was in the middle between remarkable and Carbon Hill. -pg 274
"How did it feel to shoot that deer, Jack" I asked. "Were you scared? Did it look dangerous? Or did you feel bad about it 'cause it was pretty?"
He answered with his mouth full. "Both, I guess."
He figured that out quicker than I did. That the right answer could be more than one thing at the same time.
-pg 287 (last paragraph)
The sun was strong, and I was calmed by the heat, the sweat. Amazing the difference between the smell of the earth, warm and moist, full of cucumbers and tomatoes, watermelon and corn, compared to barren dirt, ripe with only black rock. I loved sucking up great breaths of that growth and green - full-sized lungfuls of peas and squash and soil instead of careful, shallow sips always testing for a pocket of after damp or black damp, one of the stranglers. -pg 43
None of the operators wanted to do a thing for you. Living in their big houses with maids and gardeners, cream in their coffee and roast chicken whenever they wanted, they could empty out the change in their pockets and pay a crippled man a year's wages. But they didn't. Could be money was a sickness that spread through their veins, but they couldn't ever have enough. They'd let a man die from bad mine construction, with his wife and children looking forward to starving as soon as the funeral was over, and they'd no more than toss a bill or two on the coffin. Hearts choked off, no feeling at all. Like a women who could kill her own child. We couldn't do nothing about them. But we might could do something about her. -pg 53
I wanted my well and my creek and my dreams back. Some nights, sitting out there on the porch by the well, I'd thought that view was the most beautiful, perfect thing in the world. And the more I thought about the baby, the uglier everything got. I wanted to stop thinking about it altogether. -pg 60
The woods started at the edge of the creek, and the sound of moving water blocked out the sound of birds until I got deep into the trees. Then the ground was speckled with shadows and leaves and sometimes sunshine, and my shoes made loud sounds that made me feel like I didn't belong. But if I was still, I could be compltely quiet, and I could sink into the woods, maybe lean against a tree or sit down on a flat rock with no moss or bugs. I could hear pecans or hickory nuts hit the ground. No one else there. No one watching, no one listening. I liked the woods best when I could be alone. -pg 66
Grandma Moore had separated from Grandpa Moore before I was born, leaving him in Fayette and moving here to a house Papa bought her. That was the first house she ever lived in that was her very own. And Grandpa Moore's mother had divorced her husband and changed her name and all the kids' names back to her maiden name. That's why we were Moores. He must've done something awful to make her want to go out and not just erase him out of her life, but erase his name, too. Whatever he did, if he hadn't done it, we'd all be named Adams. -pg 68
With boys and most grown-ups, you ended up feeling like they were holding up some yardstick to you. I didn't like being measured was all. -pg 69
When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
-pg 79
1873 hymn written by Horatio Spafford, used in the context in the book as a hymn the girls like, in church, as they're looking around for who which woman may have killed their child
For years I thought of her sweetness as written there in the darkness of her eyes, the softness of her mouth. Remembered--imagined?--that from that first night, I knew her small hands would mend a pain in my neck as sure as a swig of whiskey, that the crook of her elbow would fit a baby like God had carved it purely for that purpose. -pg 103
In church we learned about Cain and Abel. Abel tended the flock and Cain worked the soil, and the Lord preferred Abel's offerings of fat firstborn animal sacrifices to Cain's offerings of vegetables. (Even as a teenager, Tess would keep on about that passage all the way home from church - "Do you think God would like squash? Do you think Cain got in all that trouble just because God was allergic to green beans or some such?" And eventually Papa would tell her to hush because she was being sacrilegious, and he'd try to keep his mouth from twitching. But Cain was jealous that the Lord favored Abel, and he killed his brother. The Lord heard Abel's blood cry out to him from the ground, and he cursed Cain to wander ceaselessly across the earth. And to make sure that Cain wasn't killed before he got in a life's worth of wandering, God put the Mark of Cain on him. -pg 118
(The next passage talks about how this was used the Sunday school teacher to explain race relations and prejudice - ascribing Blackness as the Mark of Cain.
She goes on to say: "There was ugliness to it, too, I didn't miss that, but church was full of ugly things - blood and crucifixion and thorns and swords and ears lopped off - that were part of God's perfect plan. -pg 118
An educated old maid was the worst of all, bottom of the list. Aunt Celia said no man wanted a woman who cared more about books than she did about him. When I was learning long division, the numbers all swam together and I hated it. Aunt Celia said then that it didn't pay to be too smart, that it wouldn't serve me well anyhow. I figured out long division anyway, partly because that made me mad, and partly because when I repeated it to Papa, he said, "It don't pay to be too stupid, neither." -pg 140
I never liked sermons about this world being just a train stop. It had always seemed like a pretty nice place to me, with magnolias and chocolate cake and baby chicks. But it could be that I'd missed something important, that really the earth was a place as full of hatefulness and danger as the preacher said. -pg 151
Mama's sister Emmaline died at eighteen, and Aunt Merilyn named her youngest daughter for her. That daughter's granddaughter named her youngest daughter Emmaline. When the family and friends packed into a tiny maternity-ward room in Boston, Massachusets, in 2004, text-messaging the good news while they waited their turn to tug at the fingers of a dark-headed baby, they were touching some part of a girl who died quietly on top of a handmade quilt in 1906. -pg 162
Ever since that baby died, pieces didn't fit together as well as they used to. Some things were convoluted before, of course. Papa was the strongest man in the world, so of course nothing could hurt him, but he was cracked all over from the mines. God was good, but he might decide to send you to hell. Getting baptized in the river cleaned your soul, but I still had to take a bath on Saturday nights even if I'd just been swimming. -pg 173
But usually I tried to ignore it when the pieces didn't come together quite right, even when something big and heavy poked at the edge of my mind and tried to shove its way in. Especially then. -pg 173 (next paragraph after the above)
I didn't want to live in some far-off place or do some remarkable thing. And I didn't want this. I didn't want to give every last speck of energy to my husband and houseful of kids and have no ime at all for any pleasure of my own. I wanted something left for myself. ALl that was left was to figure out what was in the middle between remarkable and Carbon Hill. -pg 274
"How did it feel to shoot that deer, Jack" I asked. "Were you scared? Did it look dangerous? Or did you feel bad about it 'cause it was pretty?"
He answered with his mouth full. "Both, I guess."
He figured that out quicker than I did. That the right answer could be more than one thing at the same time.
-pg 287 (last paragraph)
readbyashleyd's review against another edition
3.0
I’m right in the middle with this one, I didn’t love it but I didn’t hate it either. Some parts were incredibly interesting and at times I was thoroughly enjoying this novel and convinced it would be a five star read because there’s nothing I enjoy more than a good historical fiction with some mystery thrown in. Sometimes with historical fiction you see the same kind of storyline repeated too often but this story was definitely an original idea that I’ve never seen before so I loved that. But then it just seemed to meander around and get lost and not go anywhere for the longest time. The story is supposed to revolve around one action but it’s like it got forgotten for part of the story. But then when it did come back around it was excellent and really had me feeling emotional. So you see what I mean, I’m just right in the middle with this one!