Reviewed by Sally Kruger aka "Readingjunky" for TeensReadToo.com
Water is precious. Water has made slaves out of Ruby's people. While the rest of the world lives normally, Ruby and the people in what is referred to as the Congregation spend their days gathering water.
Although there is a small lake nearby, the members of the Congregation are forced to seek water in the forest. Each one armed with simple tools, a spoon, and a cup, they struggle in the oppressive heat to collect water drop by tiny drop. They are forced by the Overseers, led by a tyrant named Darwin, to gather their daily quota. Failure to meet their quota earns them a beating.
Members of the Congregation are unique. Ruby, for instance, is two hundred years old, but she doesn't look a day older than seventeen. Blessed from birth with some special power in her blood, she is destined to be the group's leader, perhaps sooner than even she expects.
The Congregants follow a mysterious leader they call Otto. According to her mother, Otto is Ruby's father. He left before she was even born, and now the group works tirelessly and waits for his return and the hope that he will set them free. But the wait is taking its toll on the members. Some are losing faith, and arguments between them threaten to weaken the group. Also, secrets known to only a few could either save them or cause a rebellion.
Most evenings, Ruby visits the huge cisterns that stores the gathered water until the Visitor comes to collect from the containers. The purpose of her nightly visits is to add drops of her own blood to the water, creating a life-sustaining element to the liquid. Like her father, she possesses the power that has allowed her people to carry on for centuries.
During one visit to the cisterns, Ruby meets an Overseer named Ford. He treats her kindly, and a friendship begins to form. Soon, Ruby finds herself thinking about Ford all the time and watching for him as she collects her quota every day. He may represent her chance for freedom, or her destruction if he reveals the mysterious power of her blood.
Pam Bachorz is the author of CANDOR, another unusual dystopian YA novel. DROUGHT presents the secret world of a group still living in the past but working to provide for the world of the future. Bachorz takes her readers into the life of Ruby and her people to illustrate the unreasonable and frightening control one group of people can hold over another.
Water is precious. Water has made slaves out of Ruby's people. While the rest of the world lives normally, Ruby and the people in what is referred to as the Congregation spend their days gathering water.
Although there is a small lake nearby, the members of the Congregation are forced to seek water in the forest. Each one armed with simple tools, a spoon, and a cup, they struggle in the oppressive heat to collect water drop by tiny drop. They are forced by the Overseers, led by a tyrant named Darwin, to gather their daily quota. Failure to meet their quota earns them a beating.
Members of the Congregation are unique. Ruby, for instance, is two hundred years old, but she doesn't look a day older than seventeen. Blessed from birth with some special power in her blood, she is destined to be the group's leader, perhaps sooner than even she expects.
The Congregants follow a mysterious leader they call Otto. According to her mother, Otto is Ruby's father. He left before she was even born, and now the group works tirelessly and waits for his return and the hope that he will set them free. But the wait is taking its toll on the members. Some are losing faith, and arguments between them threaten to weaken the group. Also, secrets known to only a few could either save them or cause a rebellion.
Most evenings, Ruby visits the huge cisterns that stores the gathered water until the Visitor comes to collect from the containers. The purpose of her nightly visits is to add drops of her own blood to the water, creating a life-sustaining element to the liquid. Like her father, she possesses the power that has allowed her people to carry on for centuries.
During one visit to the cisterns, Ruby meets an Overseer named Ford. He treats her kindly, and a friendship begins to form. Soon, Ruby finds herself thinking about Ford all the time and watching for him as she collects her quota every day. He may represent her chance for freedom, or her destruction if he reveals the mysterious power of her blood.
Pam Bachorz is the author of CANDOR, another unusual dystopian YA novel. DROUGHT presents the secret world of a group still living in the past but working to provide for the world of the future. Bachorz takes her readers into the life of Ruby and her people to illustrate the unreasonable and frightening control one group of people can hold over another.
For the past 200 years, Ruby and her congregation have lived under the unwielding hands of Darwin West and the Overseers, harvesting the supposedly special Water from their woods. Few people, however, know that the Waters miraculous properties stem not from the actual liquid collected from plants by their pewter cups and spoons, but by Rubys blood, for she is the daughter of Otto, the man who gave birth to their congregation, whom everyone believes will eventually return to save them.
When Ruby meets Ford, a kind Overseer who treats her like an actual, special human being, Ruby is hard-pressed to fight the desire to escape into the modern world with his help. But her escape means danger for everyone else she cares about. Will she risk everything for a slim chance at making things better, or should she protect everyone by holding on to faith in Ottos return?
Im not quite sure what it is about this book that just didnt do it for me. I like Pam Bachorzs writing style, so direct, and haunting in its sparseness. I thought the premise was interesting. But somehow, when combined, DROUGHT became a slow-moving slog of a read that did not evoke my sympathies and actually made me very frustrated.
I generally like when I as the reader get to figure out whats going on with the books world, but in DROUGHT, it took dozens and dozens of pages before I was able to even begin piecing together what exactly is going on, what I should focus on as the main conflict, and what I should think will occur. First, its hard to pinpoint what genre this book falls under. Is it dystopian? Ruby doesnt live in a pleasant world, certainly, but something extraordinary has to be occurring for the same group of people to have lived 200 years. Is it fantasy? For all intents and purposes, the book is set in our world: upstate New York, to be exact, and while the woods that Ruby lives in seems like a distortion of early nineteenth-century American life, apparently outside their bubble lies the modern world. Is it magical realism? Thats how I think Id best describe this book, although besides for the Waters properties I dont think theres anything magical at all.
Confusing premise aside, I was willing to give this book a try, until I realized that absolutely nothing is happening in the story. In the first 150 or so pages, Ruby worries about her mothers selflessness, secretly heals her mother, worries about the dying elderly Ellie, ponders the legitimacy of their faith in Ottos salvation, and gets frustrated about their predicament but doesnt do anything. Really, Im almost impressed by how much inaction occurs.
Interspersed with the lack of action is a kind of negligent behavior that, honestly, I am shocked would occur in a community thats supposedly as strict as Rubys. Not to cultivate my masochistic stance or anything, but this sort of inhumane slavery for two centuries straight would drive the humanity out of anyone. And yet I was honestly surprised at the amount of compassion the characters showed. If Darwin West has been basically keeping me just under starvation for two centuries, and then offered me a buffet breakfast, are you kidding me? Id be running people over to get to the food. It may sound horrifying, but its the truth: people have been driven to heartless measures for much, much less. Similarly, if Water is so hard to find, especially during this drought summer in which the book is set, I would hoard my water with a vengeance, and would never EVER allow a single drop of water to carelessly spill. Argh! The amount of carelessly spilled drops bugged me to no end. The society seems to decree Water a sacred resource, which makes the characters nonchalant attitude towards it troublingly inconsistent with the world theyre in.
Due to logical inconsistencies and a snail-like plot, I was unable to connect with anything about this book. And I should probably figure out what type of book this is before Id dare recommend it to anyone. Justargh.
When Ruby meets Ford, a kind Overseer who treats her like an actual, special human being, Ruby is hard-pressed to fight the desire to escape into the modern world with his help. But her escape means danger for everyone else she cares about. Will she risk everything for a slim chance at making things better, or should she protect everyone by holding on to faith in Ottos return?
Im not quite sure what it is about this book that just didnt do it for me. I like Pam Bachorzs writing style, so direct, and haunting in its sparseness. I thought the premise was interesting. But somehow, when combined, DROUGHT became a slow-moving slog of a read that did not evoke my sympathies and actually made me very frustrated.
I generally like when I as the reader get to figure out whats going on with the books world, but in DROUGHT, it took dozens and dozens of pages before I was able to even begin piecing together what exactly is going on, what I should focus on as the main conflict, and what I should think will occur. First, its hard to pinpoint what genre this book falls under. Is it dystopian? Ruby doesnt live in a pleasant world, certainly, but something extraordinary has to be occurring for the same group of people to have lived 200 years. Is it fantasy? For all intents and purposes, the book is set in our world: upstate New York, to be exact, and while the woods that Ruby lives in seems like a distortion of early nineteenth-century American life, apparently outside their bubble lies the modern world. Is it magical realism? Thats how I think Id best describe this book, although besides for the Waters properties I dont think theres anything magical at all.
Confusing premise aside, I was willing to give this book a try, until I realized that absolutely nothing is happening in the story. In the first 150 or so pages, Ruby worries about her mothers selflessness, secretly heals her mother, worries about the dying elderly Ellie, ponders the legitimacy of their faith in Ottos salvation, and gets frustrated about their predicament but doesnt do anything. Really, Im almost impressed by how much inaction occurs.
Interspersed with the lack of action is a kind of negligent behavior that, honestly, I am shocked would occur in a community thats supposedly as strict as Rubys. Not to cultivate my masochistic stance or anything, but this sort of inhumane slavery for two centuries straight would drive the humanity out of anyone. And yet I was honestly surprised at the amount of compassion the characters showed. If Darwin West has been basically keeping me just under starvation for two centuries, and then offered me a buffet breakfast, are you kidding me? Id be running people over to get to the food. It may sound horrifying, but its the truth: people have been driven to heartless measures for much, much less. Similarly, if Water is so hard to find, especially during this drought summer in which the book is set, I would hoard my water with a vengeance, and would never EVER allow a single drop of water to carelessly spill. Argh! The amount of carelessly spilled drops bugged me to no end. The society seems to decree Water a sacred resource, which makes the characters nonchalant attitude towards it troublingly inconsistent with the world theyre in.
Due to logical inconsistencies and a snail-like plot, I was unable to connect with anything about this book. And I should probably figure out what type of book this is before Id dare recommend it to anyone. Justargh.
