Two books I read in October really let me down. Both are by excellent authors whose works I eagerly anticipate. Here they are with SPOILERS.
Nevada Barr- Boar Island
This book deals with the important topic of cyberbullying. Anna Pigeon, Park Ranger with an attitude is faced with a problem close to home. The adopted daughter of her friend Heath Jarrod, a paraplegic, is being ruthlessly menaced by unknown haters on social media. To escape, Heath takes her daughter Elizabeth to Boar Island, a remote getaway near Acadia Park, Maine, close to Ranger Pigeon’s current assignment. The plot is very complex and ultimately satisfying despite the fact that both Heath and Anna metamorphose into Superwomen. Their derring do is more than a little unbelievable. A much bigger problem is the treatment of Evangelical Christians. Elizabeth has been rescued from a dangerous cult. Such cults do exist but they are hardly representive of Evangelical Christianity as Ms. Barr suggests. I’m sure that a percentage of Ms. Barr’s readers are ordinary, decent Evangelicals, struggling to live honorably in a world that makes that difficult. Ms. Barr’s contempt for Evangelicals makes it a hard read for me and other Christians.
Margaret Coel – Winter’s Child
Winter’s Child follows two parallel stories involving white children kidnapped by Arapahoe Indians. The first story takes place in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century in which two girls are taken in an Indian raid. One later escapes but the other grows up Arapahoe and is happy with her new identity. When, as an adult, she is offered a chance to return to white culture by her sister, she refuses.
The second story revolves around the kidnapping of a baby in the present day. Although this is not explained fully until the end of the book, it involves an Arapahoe couple who have lost a baby. The father, upset by his wife’s emotional decline, arranges to have a baby–any baby–kidnapped for his wife. The kidnappers carjack a car with a baby inside, running over the mother as she tries to save her infant. This distrait father takes on a five year search for his child. Meanwhile the Arapahoe couple wants to legally adopt her. As the original father comes close, the couple flees, taking the child once again. The author seems to approve of this and to sympathize with the criminal father and his innocent wife. There is a feeling that the little girl should stay Indian, as the earlier one did. But she is only 5 and is one of the only 3 innocent people in the book–the child’s original family. I found it morally offensive that the author should implicitly condone kidnapping as long as the criminals are Indian. The father, deprived of his family by criminals, is left to dangle and continue his search. He is even willing to work out an arrangement whereby the Arapahoe family can continue to see the child. The racism inherent in allowing the couple to get away with a child not theirs because they are Indian is obvious and deplorable.
Books and Authors I Like 