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DWalters said: The River Way Home--What a Gem!
I just turned the last page of this book. And, what can I tell you that other reviewers haven’t mentioned already? This book reminded me what it’s like to be a kid, and to dream of grandiose adventures in a world that is full of wildness, wonder, and possibilities. We are so conditioned in this age to wait for the “nightmare” to come out and grab us in current fiction. And, so I waited. And, I waited some more. The fun adventure never turned into a horrible nightmare. Because of this it gave me the ability to relax and really enjoy the mischief that the kids got into along the way.
And, although to some, it might have seemed that the tight situations might have been tall tales stretched a bit too long. But for anyone who has lived in Florida, they might say most of what the kids did seemed like it could have happened. I did live there in the early 1970s through the 1980s. The storms are brutal and frightening, the Everglades were wild, the gators were scary, and I did have occasion to run from the boogie man more than a few times. It’s a bit hard to envision all of this from the big cities of Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, but if you go upstate toward the middle—at least back then—you could see how the landscape and the people changed. It was a whole different world that could really give you a glimpse of this untamed wild Florida we see in the book.
So, what if the story is a yarn told by an old grisly cowboy camped out around a fire on a clear starry night? Isn’t that what we are missing these days--just a good old fashioned story to tickle the imagination, and lend a person to believe that their hopes and dreams might come true? That’s what this book was--just a marvelous tale—unique, unlike any I’ve read in a long time. Three scrappy kids, all unlikely friends from totally different backgrounds, fall into all kinds of trouble in the raw wilderness of the Florida Everglades in 1914. This story has heart, and these kids have spunk and guts and imagination to get out of the crazy situations they get into. They’re smart. They’re brave. And, best of all, they are tight and true friends.
The book is full of hope that all their dreams will come true: Blue-eyed Billy wants to have a ranch
tags: Inspired me, young adult fiction, adventure, Florida History, Stuart Floria |
