Helpful Score: 10
This book is about a family in Alabama during the depression. The story begins with a baby being dropped into the family well. Although that really isn't the main theme of the story, it is interwoven through the narrative. This is a book about a family struggling to survive in hard times. It is about compassion for your fellow man. It is about the doubts of a young girl who wonders whether there is something else in her future besides being a wife and mother. Also, race relations, and labor struggles, hopes, dreams and disappointments. I know that sounds like a lot to cover in one story, but it is very well written and compelling. I am the granddaughter of coalminers, so I found that part of the story especially interesting.
I loved the story of this family, especially the relationship between the parents and their children. The struggles of the family in hard times were long and difficult, and yet the parents taught by example the need to always be compassionate and charitable, even though you have very little of your own.
I loved the story of this family, especially the relationship between the parents and their children. The struggles of the family in hard times were long and difficult, and yet the parents taught by example the need to always be compassionate and charitable, even though you have very little of your own.
Helpful Score: 7
Oh my gosh!I almost feel sorry for this author,this is her first book and it is amazing! It will be very hard for her next book to compare to this.Everytime I opened it and began reading,I was transported right on this familys front porch,with a sweaty canning jar full of super sweet tea,sitting in an old ladder back chair with the seat almost busted through,eavesdropping on all the secrets and stories this family had to tell! I hated to see the book end!
Helpful Score: 6
Gin Phillips's debut novel is terrific. Told in several voices, it is set in Alabama in a mining town during the Depression. It is a story about a baby thrown down a well, the Moore family, and their friends and neighbors. It gives you a glimpse of how some people survived, just barely, during the Depression. Virgie and Tess Moore are quite engaging characters, as are the secondary characters. It is very well written and I look forward to her next novel.
Helpful Score: 5
A wonderfully rich period piece about the drowning of an infant baby in a well and the mystery that surrounds the unfortunate death. You will view the unfolding events through 9 year-old Tess's eyes and you will feel as if you are in her mind and right there living in the 1930's Alabama's small town coal-mining country. A touching novel from a gifted debut author, highly recommended.
Helpful Score: 3
This is a beautifully written book... A story about family living under some of the most trying conditions, during a difficult era, and still managing to keep their love, values and humor. It's a book that any reader can take something from and apply it to their own life... Gratitude for our plentitude, compassion for those less fortunate, standing in your own values when others would have you compromise them, embracing the simple things in life and, perhaps most importantly, remembering that love, above all else, is what really matters.
Kudos to Gin Phillips for a great first novel. I'll look forward to more from this author and won't hesitate to recommend it to my friends and fellow book lovers.
Two thumbs up.
Kudos to Gin Phillips for a great first novel. I'll look forward to more from this author and won't hesitate to recommend it to my friends and fellow book lovers.
Two thumbs up.
Helpful Score: 2
I loved this book! What a great first effort by Gin Phillips, I'll be looking for future books by this very talented author. The characters are authentic and relatable. You can almost smell the poverty and coal dust and will revel in the triumph of the human spirit.
Helpful Score: 1
A really good book. Quick to read.
Helpful Score: 1
I love books about the South and I am a child of the Great Depression. This book is about life in a small mining town in the 30's. My life experience was in the same time frame, but in a tiny lumber mill town in west Florida. This book is so well written and the dialogue rings so true to the time that it really took me back to my own childhood. I was reminded of how old everyone looked, how dirty their faces and fingernails, how all of the men wore hats, and how incredibly hard everyone worked just to squeeze out a living for their families.All women today should be glad they were not living back then. It is no wonder that the photos in the 30's showed women looking so tired and worn. Loved this little book. Congrats to the author.
Genny
Genny
Reading this beautiful book takes you back in time to a special place and its people. We see and experience 1931 Alabama through the eyes and voices of a coal mining family. Each voice tells of their hardships, as they see and feel them. They speak of their own lives while reflecting on others. They are guided by deep morals and values. Through them we are given an impression of the coal mining industry. We see the effect on those who actually work the mines and their families.
One warm night, nine year old Tess witnesses a woman tossing a baby into her familys well. Haunted by it, with the aid of her older sister, she sets out to solve the mystery surrounding such a horrific act. As the summer heats up, the community is also drawn into the mystery of the well.
Gin Phillips created a heartfelt story with characters authentic to the period and place. Her book gives an understanding and respect for these people, who represent an integral part of American history.
One warm night, nine year old Tess witnesses a woman tossing a baby into her familys well. Haunted by it, with the aid of her older sister, she sets out to solve the mystery surrounding such a horrific act. As the summer heats up, the community is also drawn into the mystery of the well.
Gin Phillips created a heartfelt story with characters authentic to the period and place. Her book gives an understanding and respect for these people, who represent an integral part of American history.
Carbon Hill, Alabama. 1931. A small coal-mining town. Nine year-old Tess secretly witnesses a woman toss a baby into their well without a word. This event, and others that transpire, force the family to face a world alien to their tight-knit family. One of darkness, racism, and a world that is harsh at times. I REALLY liked this book. Great descriptions of life in that period and in the mines. The love and respect between the family members is endearing - and sorely missing in our society today. Well worth the read. Sorry to have it end. Give it a try!
One of the best books I have read in a long time. Maybe it is partly because I am an Alabamian and can remember my Mother tell about hard times in the 30's. But the author was very accurate about what she wrote about and that makes for very interesting reading. I hope to read more of her writing.
great book.. enjyed it alot and now passing it on to freinds to read
This book surprises at first because of its being about coal mining in Alabama, of all places, but the atmosphere and the characters remind me of what I liked about *The Waltons* on t.v. years ago. Unfortunately, there's a bit of the t.v. image of Depression-era life in this book, with incongruities. For example, the mother of the family, Leta, is mentioned a number of times having bare and dirty feet, but her teen daughters wear stockings and shoes just for going to school. The family is poor enough that they almost never eat meat (though the daddy is always giving it away to folks), and one daughter visits a rich friend in town and is amazed at the food on the table, but her own family has one of the first automobiles owned in Carbon Hill. Plus, Leta makes biscuits at least once by adding milk to her flour BEFORE adding the fat. No way.
Those things just bug me, but I felt the story had a beautiful roundness to it, with believable attitudes and resolutions, other than Leta not believing the truth about the well. I'm actually using one beautiful description of the Birmingham cityscape, reminiscent of Dickens, as an illustration in a writing class I'm teaching this year. :-)
Those things just bug me, but I felt the story had a beautiful roundness to it, with believable attitudes and resolutions, other than Leta not believing the truth about the well. I'm actually using one beautiful description of the Birmingham cityscape, reminiscent of Dickens, as an illustration in a writing class I'm teaching this year. :-)
A really well-done story that reveals a-year-in-the-life (and more) of one family living in rural Alamabma in the early 30's from the point of view of each of five family members. I look forward to additional books by the author.
In a small Alabama coal-mining town during the summer of 1931, nine-year-old Tess Moore sits on her back porch and watches a woman toss a baby into her familys well without a word. This shocking act of violence sets in motion a chain of events that forces Tess and her older sister Virgie to look beyond their own door and learn the value of kindness and lending a helping hand. As Tess and Virgie try to solve the mystery of the well, an accident puts their seven-year-old brothers life in danger, revealing just what sorts of sacrifices their parents, Albert and Leta, have made in order to give their children a better life, and the power of love and compassion to provide comfort to those we love.
I loved the prose. Ordinary statements/conversations in the book made me smile. I also appreciated the way the characters progressed as they went about solving the mystery of the well. Very thought provoking.
The book is set in the 1930's during the depression.Tess Moore witnesses a woman walk over to the families water well and toss a baby into the well. Yes That is how the book starts off. The family at first do not believe her but it becomes painfully true after the Mother takes a trip to the well. Tess has nightmares and struggles almost daily. Her and her older Sister Virgie try to figure out who would do such a thing throughout the whole book. I have mixed feeling on how I feel about this book. The writing is flawless but the story just did not draw me in. It lacked a sense of direction at times and others it was dull. I don't want to give the ending away but I did not like how she ended it. Writing is a three star book but the story is a two star.
This book was initially presented to me as a mystery. "Who put the baby in the well?" is the question that is discussed on the back of the book, and is the major event that gets this story going. Unfortunately, the mystery of the baby in the well is not the story arc of the novel. Instead, it serves as the bookends, showing up at the beginning and then again at the end. The middle consists of something else entirely.
In truth, this is not a mystery at all. It is a character study of a poor family in an Alabama mining town in the 1920s. If you read this book and expect a mystery, you will be sorely disappointed. If you read it with the expectation that you are about to be immersed in the day-to-day lives of this one Southern family, you will have a greater appreciation for the skill and detail that this first-time author is allowing you to experience.
In spite of the baby-in-the-well subplot, there was really very little action or suspense in this book. There were a few situations where Phillips could have created more tension, but she robbed herself of those opportunities by telling you too much up front, or by using a flashback to explain the future (and therefore gave away a major plot point very early on). Phillips also used a multiple-narrator approach to tell this story, which was the weakest part of her presentation. Each of her characters had depth and individuality. Unfortunately, all of them pretty much sounded the same.
Overall, (minor complaints aside) I thought this was a good book, beautifully written, dripping with detail of life in the Deep South. It is a solid debut from a promising new author, and I applaud Gin Phillips for her work.
In truth, this is not a mystery at all. It is a character study of a poor family in an Alabama mining town in the 1920s. If you read this book and expect a mystery, you will be sorely disappointed. If you read it with the expectation that you are about to be immersed in the day-to-day lives of this one Southern family, you will have a greater appreciation for the skill and detail that this first-time author is allowing you to experience.
In spite of the baby-in-the-well subplot, there was really very little action or suspense in this book. There were a few situations where Phillips could have created more tension, but she robbed herself of those opportunities by telling you too much up front, or by using a flashback to explain the future (and therefore gave away a major plot point very early on). Phillips also used a multiple-narrator approach to tell this story, which was the weakest part of her presentation. Each of her characters had depth and individuality. Unfortunately, all of them pretty much sounded the same.
Overall, (minor complaints aside) I thought this was a good book, beautifully written, dripping with detail of life in the Deep South. It is a solid debut from a promising new author, and I applaud Gin Phillips for her work.
If you are looking for a bit of excitement in this book, keep on looking. There is nothing shocking, tale twisting, or page turning about this book. If you wanted to turn a textbook into something a little more grabbing that this would be the answer. It tells you everything you wanted to know about the era it was written in by the point of view of 5 different characters. Leta the mother, Albert the father, Virgie the older daughter, Tess the other daughter, and their son Jack. The story starts off in the late 20's and thirties during the great depression. The family lives in Carbon Hill, Alabama in a coal mining town and they deal with racism and teh struggle of trying to make enough money to keep the everyone fed. It's not bad for a first try of writing a book.
