A review by joniallison23
Eli the Good by Silas House

5.0

Places exist in this world that hold a sense of power and wonder over the people who love them. The town of Refuge, the setting of The Book of Eli by Silas House, is such a place. In the summer of 1976, Eli Book ages well beyond his actual time on earth. He may be 10 years old, but by the end of the summer, he is an old ten-year old. Eli spends his summer struggling with a father who suffers from the aftershocks of fighting in Vietnam, a 16-year-old sister who is rebelling, and a best friend who has been abandoned by her mother. Through it all, Eli seeks solace from the natural world around him and an aunt who has returned to rural Kentucky from Washington, D.C. It is from the wisdom of this aunt that Eli learns to value the place of his childhood as she tells him that "there's not a tree in the world like the ones you grow up with. You never forget them, and the trees remember you." He also learns that "it was better to cry than to suck it up and go around conjuring hate in your heart." The powerfully descriptive writing of Silas House left me with chills despite the rising temperatures outside my own mountain windows. I finished this tremendous book with both a sense of awe in House's power to transport me to Refuge, Kentucky and a sense of sadness that so many of my own students, this week preparing for the end of grade reading tests, may never experience the power a great piece of fiction has to pick you up out of your own life and drop you for a time in someone else's.