Incident at Hawk’s Hill by Allan W. Eckert

Benjamin MacDonald is the six year old younger son of William and Esther MacDonald. The year is 1870, and the place is somewhere to the north of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. In this prairie land the MacDonald family own a farm, and Ben, a child who in today’s parlance would certainly be called “neurodivergent”, has lived his life so far on that farm, exploring those prairie lands. In 1870, folks just say that Ben is “dreadful queer,” “some sort of monster or throwback, an animal-boy.” Ben seldom speaks to people even in his own family, and he has a strange attraction to and affinity for all sorts of animals–farm animals, wildlife, even birds and insects. He spends most of his days following, observing, and mimicking the creatures he finds on the farm and out on the prairie. And the animals seem to respond to Ben and accept his overtures of friendship, even kinship.

So, this Newbery Honor book from 1972 is a nature story with lots of close description of wild creatures and how they live. Although the Newbery Award and Newbery Honor are intended to be awards for children’s literature, Incident at Hawk’s Hill was originally published as an adult novel. Many older children would still appreciate the book. However, sensitive readers should be warned that the Nature pictured is indeed “red in tooth and claw.” Eckert doesn’t shy away from describing–in detail– predators hunting and eating their prey, animals fighting and and defending their young, and eventually the deaths of some of those predators at the hands of men.

The author prefaces his story with this note, “The story which follows is a slightly fictionalized version of an incident which actually occurred at the time and place noted.” An historical magazine, Manitoba Pageant, in 1960 published an article entitled “The Boy Who Lived in a Badger Hole”. The article tells about an 1873 reported incident of a lost boy, found after ten days living in a badger hole. Eckert may have based his Ben’s story on this magazine report. In the book, one day in June, Ben becomes lost on the prairie, and the story becomes a tale of his survival. It’s a somewhat grisly and nearly unbelievable survival story as a wild badger befriends Ben and shares its den and its food with him, and ultimately Ben almost forgets his humanity as he becomes absorbed in badger life.

The ending is a bit disturbing, too, with a fight between two men, almost to the death. If violent death and threats of death, for both animals and people, are too much for you or your child reader, this book is not for you.

Nonetheless, I found this 1972 Newbery Honor book to be fascinating thought-provoking, and quite well written. The language is descriptive and evocative of a prairie world, almost a fantasy world. In fact, at one point in the story, the storyteller writes about Ben’s getting lost, “It was certainly well past midafternoon now but still nothing looked at all familiar to him and he had the momentary panicky feeling that somehow, like the little girl in the story his mother had read to him, he had stepped into another world.” (Alice in Wonderland, published in 1865?)

The cover blurb calls Incident at Hawk’s Hill “a poignant story of human courage and change, a simple fable rich with wonder.” I’m not so sure about the “fable” part, but the story is rich with wonder. Several characters call Ben’s survival a miracle and attribute it to God’s intervention. I like the way the story points, without preaching, toward tolerance and understanding for people whose engagement with the world does not fit inside the “normal” template. Those readers with an interest in nature, wildlife, and natural history will also find the descriptions of the habits and ways of various animals in the story to be quite engaging and informative.

The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope

Oct21

This three-volume, more than 700 page novel is one of the best of Trollope’s works that I have read so far. Thankfully, I have many more Trollope novels yet to read, since he wrote and published over fifty. I think I’ve read about ten. And I have yet to finish The Palliser novels, which series includes The Eustace Diamonds.

The Eustace Diamonds, especially the character of Lizzie Greystock Eustace, owes something to Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and to Becky Sharp. Lizzie is Becky Sharp, with money to spare and not quite as much sharp intelligence. The money comes from Lizzie’s conveniently deceased first husband, and her lack of foresight and basic intellectual capacity shows itself as the story progresses after the death of her husband, Sir Florian Eustace. Lizzie certainly has beauty and charm, but she gets herself into a tangled mess over the Eustace family diamonds, a mess that Becky Sharp could surely have avoided had she been blessed with as much money and station as Lizzie.

According to the introduction to my edition of The Eustace Diamonds, Trollope’s novel was also influenced by Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone. Both books are named for their MacGuffin, a jewel or set of jewels, and the jewels become a symbol of the ridiculous materialism and greed that drive most of the characters in the book. The very expensive Eustace diamonds, worth more than 10,000 pounds, are hidden, displayed, argued over, stolen, hidden again and stolen again in the course of this story, but now that I’ve finished the book I can hardly remember what actually happened to them in the end.

What I do remember is what happens to Lizzie and to her various friends, enemies, and suitors. I suppose that’s what is meant by a “character-driven novel.” I didn’t like Lizzie, and most of the other characters in the book were not sympathetic either, but I did find them to be very intriguing. What happens when a community of people get themselves into a web of lies and deceit and play-acting and and gossip and broken promises and mercenary motives and actions? Well, The Eustace Diamonds happens.

I’m surprised that more people haven’t mined Trollope for dramatic purposes. There are TV mini-series of Doctor Thorne and The Way We Live Now, as well as one called The Pallisers and another called The Barchester Chronicles. I suppose the latter two try to smush all of the books in those series of half a dozen novels into one TV mini-series? Methinks it would take a lot of smushing and crushing.

Anyway, I recommend The Eustace Diamonds as a book, either along with the series of Palliser novels or as a stand alone read. Unfortunately, I found a bit of myself in Lizzie, and I was motivated to take that part of myself that tries to justify and cover up my sins and subject it to a bit of repentance. You may not find a moral reckoning for yourself in The Eustace Diamonds, but I do believe you will be entertained and reminded of some home truths, such as “The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil,” or perhaps, “What a tangled web we weave/ When first we practice to deceive.“

Time and Time Again by James Hilton

Oct1

James Hilton was the author of the best-selling novels Lost Horizon, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and Random Harvest. These three were his 1930’s pre-WW2 novels and his most successful. Time and Time Again was published in 1953 when Hilton was 52 years old, and it was his final published novel. The story takes place in the time in which it was published, the early 1950’s, and its protagonist, Charles Anderson, is 52 years old, looking back on his life and diplomatic career with a very British outlook that combines measured judgment, some regret, and overall contentment.

It would seem that Charles Anderson is James Hilton to some extent, but the differences are as obvious as the similarities. James Hilton was married and divorced twice and childless. Charles Anderson has a college romance with a lower class Cockney office worker, and later marries and has a son. If the book has a theme or a set of ideas, it’s about those two kinds of relationships: upper middle class and lower class, and fathers and sons. Even though Hilton moved to California, became a screenwriter in Hollywood and an American citizen, the concerns in Time and Time Again are very British.

Anderson is never very sure of his place in society, in the diplomatic corps, and even in his own family. The entire story is told from Charles’ perspective, so we’re never entirely sure whether his insights and evaluations are completely accurate. In fact, Charles, although he knows his own worth and intelligence, is never sure whether his view of life, his own life in particular, is accurate or not, which ends up making him a very endearing character.

I tried to think, while I was reading, of other writers that this book reminded me of. The only one that came to mind is Nevil Shute, who is also very British, with books set in the 1940’s and 50’s. Hilton’s novel has the same sort of gentle, unhurried exploration of British society and British mores and the changes that manifested themselves in the first half of the twentieth century that Shute writes about. Someone wrote that Hilton gives readers an idealistic, unrealistic picture of Britain in his books, and maybe he does in other books. However, Time and Time Again seems realistic in its portrayal of an ordinary, average upper middle class man and how he comes to terms with his own capacities and limitations.

It’s not an exciting read, more contemplative and somewhat thought-provoking. Like the man Charles Anderson, it’s a modest story about a modest Englishman and his interaction with the events and changing culture of the first half of the twentieth century.

Eyes of the Hawk by Elmer Kelton

Jun3

McElroy, Lee (Elmer Kelton). Eyes of the Hawk. Doubleday, 1981.

My favorite Western author, who happens to be from my own hometown of San Angelo, Texas, is Elmer Kelton. Before his death in 2009, Mr. Kelton wrote and published more forty Western novels, some under pseudonyms which included Tom Early, Alex Hawk, and Lee McElroy. Eyes of the Hawk was originally published by Kelton, using the name Lee McElroy.

Comparisons are odious and everyone has his own tastes, but I think Mr. Kelton is a much better writer than any of the other famous authors of westerns: Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey, and certainly better than Larry McMurtry. I grew up in West Texas, among the heirs of the Western tradition, and as far as I can tell Mr. Kelton gets Texas and the West and cowboys and ranch life right.

My favorite Kelton novel is The Time It Never Rained, but this one, Eyes of the Hawk, is in the running for second place among all the books by Kelton that I have read. Reed Sawyer, as an old man, narrates this story of his life and his friendship with a rancher named Thomas Canfield. Thomas Canfield is “a proud man with the fierce-eyed stare that led the Mexicans to call him gavilán–the hawk.” Canfield is hard but kind to newcomer Reed Sawyer, and Reed becomes Canfield’s employee, hired hand, and eventually is treated as part of the family as he works and supports Canfield’s ever-expanding land holdings and cattle business. But Thomas Canfield is just as strong and implacable toward his enemies as he is loyal to his friends. So when Branch Isom, a powerful businessman, and the entire town of Stonehill, TX become Canfield’s enemies, Reed Sawyer is caught between the two opposing men and forced to go from observer to actor in the ensuing drama.

This book is just so insightful about human nature and how we can become that which we hate and refuse to forgive. I would recommend it to young men (and old men) who enjoy the Western genre, and I would be curious to hear their thoughts on the story after they read it. Thomas Canfield is an admirable character in many ways, but (Spoiler alert!) he is consumed by his thirst for revenge and his bitterness toward those who have injured him. Branch Isom, on the other hand, begins as a ruthless and brash climber who will do anything to beat out the competition, but he learns eventually to humble himself and to try to make peace. Both men change over the course of the novel: one for the better and one for the worse.

Content considerations: Western violence (not explicit or gory), some cursing, prejudice against Mexicans and Polish immigrants.

Elmer Kelton’s website. You can check out a copy of Eyes of the Hawk and other books by Elmer Kelton from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.

Drovers Road by Joyce West

Jun2

West, Joyce. Drovers Road: Adventures in New Zealand, Book 1. Bethlehem Books, 2019.

I ordered this trilogy of books set on a New Zealand sheep ranch on the strength of a recommendation from Sara at Plumfield Moms. And she did not steer me wrong. The narrator, Gay Allan, tells about her life growing up in rural New Zealand, and the story is a delight. It’s a bit like All Creatures Great and Small with all the animals–sheep and goats and dogs and horses, even bees–but from a child’s perspective.

“I have made up my mind that while I lie here waiting for my sprained ankle to mend, I shall write a book. It will be about ourselves, the Allan family, about Drovers Road and all our adventures here, and then when we are grown up we can read it, and remember how happy we were.”

I think Gay is about twelve years old in this book. She lives with her Uncle Dunsany, the owner of the sheep station, and her orphaned cousins, Hugh, Eve, and Merry, and their Great Aunt Belle, who mothers them all. Drovers Road is a very horsy book, as the children and the grownups ride horses just about wherever they go, and the sheep ranch is also a horse raising concern, And of course, there are dogs, sheep dogs and stray dogs and a special dog named Bugle who saves Gay’s life at one point in the story.

Or perhaps I should say, stories. The chapters in the book are episodic, with stories about a ghost, and a hunt, and an elopement, an old romance, and a new one. There’s even a Christmas story and a running-away-from-home story that nearly ends in disaster. The narrator, Gay, weaves all these stories together as she tells about her own coming to maturity in the context of a loving family in the remote hill country. I think I noted one curse word in the book with several mentions of men cursing without the specifics of words used. Merry, who is Gay’s best friend and partner-in-crime, does get a whipping from the schoolteacher when he brings an army of frogs to the one room schoolhouse where both cousins attend classes.

“The funny part is that when he went home he quite bragged about how hard Susan could hit, and admired her very much for it. He insisted upon showing us all the imaginary marks on his legs. My Uncle Dunsany shouted with laughter when he heard about it, and said that he had not been so pleased for years, and he was going round to call upon this little teacher who had spunk enough to put Merry in his place.”

There’s a lot of laughter and reasons for it, in the book, and I am looking forward to reading the next two books in the trilogy in which Gay grows up to become a young lady and an adult.

A Papa Like Everyone Else by Sydney Taylor

May29

Sydney Taylor, author of the beloved series of All-of-a-Kind Family books, also wrote this story of a Jewish Hungarian family living in a newly constituted Czechoslovakia just after the end of World War I. The family consists of Mama and her two daughters, Szerena, about 12 years old, and Gisella, age 8. (As far as I can find, the book never gives their exact ages.) The family has a papa, too, but he has been absent in America for seven years, most of Gisella’s life. In fact, Gisella doesn’t even remember her papa, and whenever she thinks about him, she mostly feels some mixture of confusion and resentment. Gisella longs to have a “papa like everyone else”, but she does not want to leave her village, the only home she has ever known, and go to America to join a papa she doesn’t really know at all.

The story paints a vivid picture of life in a small Eastern European village. The girls celebrate holidays, Jewish holidays like Passover and Sabbath, and also secular Hungarian holidays like May Day. They herd and pick the feathers from their geese, help Mama spin the flax into linen, raise silkworms, go to school, and help with all of the multitude of tasks to be done on a small family homestead. And all the while they are anticipating their eventual journey to New York City where Papa is living. Mama has had to take care of her girls mostly by herself all through the war and its aftermath, and she and Szerena are looking forward to the time when Papa will have enough money saved for them to join him in America.

This year-in-the-life-of book reminds me a little bit of All-of-a-KInd Family, except for the fact that in this story Papa is absent and the community is a rural village in Hungarian Czechoslovakia. A Papa Like Everyone Else also reminds me of Kate Seredy’s The Good Master and The Singing Tree, set in rural Hungary at about the same time period, during World War I. These books are so wonderfully descriptive of Hungarian and Jewish life during that time. I felt transported to another place and time.

Even though it might be a difficult book for any child who is missing a beloved father, deployed perhaps or just having to travel for work, A Papa Like Everyone Else might also be cathartic for children in that situation. And everyone can enjoy the depiction of farm life and Jewish life with just enough detail about how the family make plum preserves, lechwar, or how they fatten the geese by force feeding them, or how they do all the other tasks that support their meager, but also rich, family and community life.

A few content considerations: A robber comes when the family is away from home and steals almost all of their possessions. This robber is said to be a “gypsy”, and the constable slaps one of the Roma suspects, showing the usual contempt and prejudice that was current at the time for Roma people. One of GIsella’s cousins is whipped by the schoolteacher for the cousin’s lack of preparation for his lessons. And a neighbor shoots the fox that has come to steal the chickens and geese in the barn.

All’s well that ends well as Gisella and Szerena and Mama do leave the village and go to join Papa in America. The ending, in case you’re a reader of endings, is:

“As Papa caught them both in his strong arms, the girls buried their faces against his dark jacket, too overwhelmed to speak. Gisella thought, Szerena and I aren’t orphans with only a Mama to love, anymore. We’re a real family now–a family with a mama and a papa.

Papa knelt down and tipped Gisella’s chin up.

“Papa!” she whispered in shy happiness. “Oh, Papa!”

A Papa Like Everyone Else would be a perfect read aloud book for Father’s Day (or really anytime). Maybe it would give us all a renewed appreciation for our own fathers.

Valley of Dragons by Christina Baehr

Apr24

The series, The Secrets of Ormdale by Christina Baehr:

Wormwood Abbey, Book #1
Drake Hall, Book #2
Castle of the Winds, Book #3
City of Serpents, Book #4
Valley of Dragons, Book #5

I already reviewed the first book in this series, and now that I’ve finished all five books in The Secrets of Ormdale saga, I’m going to give you my thoughts on the entire series, rather than review each book individually. My immediate reaction is: excellent fantasy and romance fiction! Set in Victorian London and Yorkshire, these books are appropriately Victorian, with a nod to “new ideas” (at the time) such as women’s suffrage and equality of the sexes and classes. Each book tells a separate contained story, and yet each one leads on to the next. The themes and characters are obviously influenced by Christian and Charlotte Mason ideas and principles, but with a light touch, not at all didactic. There is some exploration of the status and plight of Jewish people in England during the time period when many Ashkenazi Jews were fleeing Eastern Europe to come to British shores. And the central character and narrator, Edith Worms, is a part of a delightful and deeply Christian family who live their commitment to Christ and his teachings rather than grounding their Christianity in Victorian cultural morality.

So, that’s the overview. As for Book #5 in the series, Valley of Dragons, it is much longer than the other four books in the series, clocking in at 499 pages. But the author needed all of those pages to finish her story. As the story commences in Book #5, there are yet many secrets to be revealed, prisoners to be released, enemies to be defeated, and dragons to be tamed.

About those dragons, these stories do feature reptiles, many kinds of serpents, salamanders, cockatrices, basilisks, sea monsters, wyverns, and lizards–even a Quetzalcoatl–all collectively termed as dragons in this alternate world. Indeed, Britain harbors at least four families of dragon keepers who have kept their many species of dragons safe and secret for centuries.

Some literary experts insist that dragons and serpents must always only be shown in literature as “bad guys”, archetypal monsters and symbols of satanic influence, like the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Anyone who writes about a “good dragon” or a dragon ally or pet is inverting the symbols and distorting the fundamental meaning of the literary tradition, and maybe even Scripture itself. However, Edith Worms and her father, a clergyman, and I beg to differ:

“‘You said once that the church had been a comfort to you when you were young, Father, because it mentioned dragons. But aren’t they always a symbol of evil in the scriptures?’

‘A symbol, yes. To say evil is like a dragon is to say evil is deadly and long-lived. . . . But not all of the dragons in the scriptures are evil. What of Job’s leviathan? You will not find a passage more full of wonder than that. Everything was good when it was created. . . .’

‘When I look at the dragons, I see something beautiful–something worth protecting,” I said. . . . “But the people of Dale, they see something fearful. Something only an archangel can save them from.’

‘God made both people and dragons, my dear. What we must find is a way for us to live together peacefully–as He intended. . . ,’ Father said encouragingly.”

Dragons can certainly signify evil and danger and monstrosity with in the literary tradition, but they can also simply stand for power and peril and wonder within that same tradition. Stories are not bound by such petty rules of literary nitpicking. Nor is Scripture. The serpent on a pole that Mose was instructed to elevate before the Israelites in the wilderness was a symbol and vehicle of healing (Numbers 21:4-9). The dragons in The Secrets of Ormdale are certainly dangerous, like lions and tigers are dangerous, but they are subject to men (and women) to whom God gave the job of tending His creation, including all kinds of reptiles, even dragons.

Dragons aside for the moment, these books are all about secrets, especially family secrets, and how they can destroy relationships and even block love itself. The books do involve romance as Edith learns to “open her heart” and accept the pain and loss that loving someone can entail. The romantic scenes themselves are completely chaste, with only a few kisses described, but there are allusions to the perversion of sexual attraction as one character recalls being sexually assaulted and another is kidnapped and almost forced into an unwilling marriage.

I thought these books with their emphasis on freedom and openness and the free choices of responsible men and women to care for each other in mutual, self-sacrificial and loving relationship were a perfect antidote to the typical Gothic romance with its brooding atmosphere of secrets and seduction. In The Secrets of Ormdale, all secrets are eventually brought out into the open, and the happily-ever-after is built on a firm foundation of mutual respect and truth.

The entire series, The Secrets of Ormdale, is available for check out from Meriadoc Homeschool Library for adults and young adult who are prepared for romantic themes, practical young heroines, and of course, beautiful and perilous dragons.

Will’s Race for Home by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Apr22

Rhodes, Jewell Parker. Will’s Race for Home: A Western. Illustrated by Olga and Aleksey Ivanov. Little, Brown and Company, 2025.

This middle grade novel is indeed a western, but a bit different from most books in the genre. Set in 1889 before and during the Oklahoma Land Rush, the story features twelve year old Will, and his family who are Black sharecroppers on a farm in Texas. Will’s father is a taciturn man, formerly enslaved, and tired of working on another man’s land. Will doesn’t understand his father, and doesn’t believe his father cares much for him. Then life changes when Father hears about free land available in Oklahoma for those who rush in to claim it. He is anxious to travel to the border to try to be one of the few who benefit from the opportunity.

Father needs someone to go with him, someone he can count on when the journey becomes difficult. So since Will can read and since there’s no one else, Will becomes his father’s trusted companion on the long way to Oklahoma and the land rush. The book also chronicles Will’s internal journey toward becoming what his father calls “tough”, becoming a man.

At first, I didn’t particularly like the prose style the book was written in: lots of short choppy sentences, with phrases interspersed between the sentences. “Sometimes Grandpa lets me try shooting a rabbit. Not often. I’m a bad shot.” “Father and Grandpa study the map. Marking, re-marking the trail. Praying for ten miles a day.” But as I read I began to appreciate the spare, straightforward prose as a reflection of the character of Will’s father in particular, and of the other western men they meet along the way. These are men who work hard and don’t always have much to say, but when they do speak, it’s important enough to require listening. The kind of man Will eventually will become, too.

So, it’s a coming of age story, a western, and a boy’s tale. In her afterword, Ms. Rhodes writes,

“Tales of African Americans on the western frontier are few. But having spent most of my life in the West and as a historical fiction writer, I felt compelled to explore the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889. . . Will’s Race for Home is only one story, exploring a fictional African American family experiencing tragedy and triumph in their quest for freedom and a home in a ‘promised land.’ Will, the son of formerly enslaved people, is my hero. He has resilience, courage and loyalty.”

Many boys , and even some girls, would enjoy this story becoming a man at the turn of the century in the Wild West. There is some extended, and I think balanced, discussion, in short bursts, of guns and violence and when to use a gun and when to threaten violence in self-defense. And the ideas about the use of guns and violence are put to the test when Will must defend his family’s land claim from claim-jumping thieves.

I haven’t read too many middle grade fiction books from 2025 yet to compare, but this one is a favorite so far. Will is my hero, too. And with the tie-in to history and the Oklahoma Land Rush, I may very well put this novel on my wish list for Meriadoc Homeschool LIbrary’s collection.

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower

Apr18

Brower, Beth. The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volumes 1-4. Rysdon Press, 2019-2021.

I saw these books recommended here and there on the internet, and the synopses and reviews sounded interesting, so I decided to try the first volume of The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion. (I assume that “unselected” means “unedited”.) Miss Lion’s journal in its first volume was a brief read, only 107 pages, but it was indeed enticing enough to make me immediately order a copy of Volume 2. Which led to Volumes 3 and 4, and I am hooked.

In Volume 1 we meet Miss Emma M. Lion as she arrives at Lapis Lazuli House in the neighborhood of St. Crispian’s, London on March 5, 1883. Miss Lion’s journal entries are filled with intriguing and mysterious references to various incidents and persons such as “The Great Burning of 1882” and “The Incident which led to The Scar” and “the monkey’s head Maxwell sent me” and “the Roman centurion (ghost) at Jacob’s Well” and more. Some of these are explained as one reads on; others are left to the imagination and most probably to later volumes. This first volume of the journals really just introduces Emma Lion and a cast of characters who include a nefarious uncle, a formidable aunt, a few friends and cousins, and various inhabitants of the slightly magical, eccentric neighborhood of St. Crispian’s.

In Volume 2, Emma, determined to remain in her home, Lapis Lazuli House, despite financial and social difficulties, begins to enter into multiple adventures and schemes and to add a bit a romance to her life. Even though Emma is not particularly interested in romantic entanglements or marriage, and even though she is not particularly eligible, having little or no money, she does have an awful lot of young men in her orbit: the photographer to whom she rents a room, her childhood nemesis turned into a handsome bachelor, the duke who lives in the neighborhood, a poetic and somewhat eccentric Church of England curate, and a charming scoundrel named Jack, to name a few. Emma navigates all of these with grace and wit, while also doing the bidding of her autocratic Aunt Eugenia, somewhat reluctantly, and managing at least a stand off with her arch-enemy Cousin Archibald.

At this point and into volumes 3 and 4, the story begins to remind one of a TV series (like Downton Abbey or All Creatures Great and Small) with lots of characters, some lovely dialog, little stories embedded into a larger story, and hints and revelations that pique the curiosity and keep one coming back for more. So far the romance is chaste and Victorian, and the language is tame, although there are a very few instances in which characters use God’s name in vain, which I wish were not present. Since I’ve only read Volumes 1-4 so far, I can’t guarantee that Emma remains a paragon of virtue, by twenty-first century standards. By Victorian standards, she’s already lost paragon status by the end of Volume 2. However, her adventures are not really shocking for anyone who is not Aunt Eugenia or of her ilk, and Emma is a church-going, Scripture reading, young lady in all I have read so far.

I love these books, and I foresee spending a great deal of time reading Emma’s journals. Author Beth Brower has promised: “the plan is to write four years of Emma’s life, give or take. And as every volume covers two months of Emma’s life, that is, indeed, six volumes each year.” So, twenty-four or more volumes. (Volume 2 and succeeding volumes are much longer than Volume 1; 191 pages for Volume 4.) At about $12.00 apiece in paperback, I also foresee spending a great deal of money collecting all of Miss Lion’s journals. If you read books in ebook form, you will have a much less expensive journey, should you decide to read your way through the Unselected Journals. If you can get them from the library, even better; however Rysdon Press seems to be Ms. Brower’s personal imprint, and many libraries do not purchase self-published books as a matter of policy. (Oh, I think Kindle Unlimited may have them for free.)

Still, here I go to order Volumes 5 and 6. At least, you will be able to check out Volumes 1-6 from Meriadoc Homeschool Library in the future. As I said, I am hooked.

The Three Brothers of Ur by J.G. Fyson

Mar8

Fyson, J.G. The Three Brothers of Ur. Illustrated by Victor G. Ambrus. Coward-McCann, 1966.

Published in 1964 in England and honored as runner-up for the British Carnegie Medal, The Three Brothers of Ur is set in ancient Ur, a city that is mentioned three times in the book of Genesis as the city of origin for the patriarch Abraham. Abraham’s two brothers, also named in Genesis, were Nahor and Haran. This is important because the three brothers of the title are Haran, the youngest, Naychor, the middle son, and Shamashazir, the eldest, heir to his father Teresh the Stern, a wealthy merchant of Ur. Despite the differences in the names, it is obvious to anyone who knows the Bible that these three brothers of Ur in the book are meant to be the three Biblical brothers who play an important part in Biblical history.

As far as I can tell, Ms. Fyson (an author about whom not much is known), seems to have done her research in regards to life in ancient Sumer/Mesopotamia. The city is made up of Sumerians and Akkadians who manage to get along with only occasional tensions between the two groups. Their religion centers on the worship of the Dingir of the Moon, Nannar, who is the patron god of the city of Ur, worshipped on the ziggurat (pyramid temple), but also the associated worship of family gods called “Teraphim” who speak to the family, give guidance, and ward off the evil dingirs (spirits) that also inhabit the city. The economy of the city is based upon craftsmanship and trade. Slavery is also practiced and portrayed in the book in the person of Uz, an enslaved donkey boy who wishes to become an artisan and sculptor of images.

The story focuses on Haran, the youngest son of Teresh, who is full of mischief and audacity. As Haran gets into one scrape after another, we get to see many aspects of what can be imagined about life in a Mesopotamian city in pre-2000 B.C. Ten year old Haran is a sometimes truant school boy who finds it difficult to learn all of the Sumerian characters for writing. His father, Teresh, is an autocratic ruler of the household whose word is law. The place of women in the society of those ancient times is limited, and yet the girls in the story–Haran’s sisters, Sarah and Dinah, in particular–are bright and interesting in their own right. The protagonist of the book is Haran, but Shamashazir, Haran’s fourteen year old brother, is the one who is beginning to grope his way toward the idea of a transcendent God, more powerful and relatable than the dingirs and the teraphim that his people and his family worship.

Children who read this story, or have it read aloud to them, will enjoy the exploits and misfortunes of Haran, who is a typical rascal of a boy, but with a good heart. Adults will be more aware of the religious journey that Shamashazir and his family embark upon in this book, and which is carried further, I am told, in the sequel called The Journey of the Eldest Son.

The Three Brothers of Ur was somewhat difficult to find in an affordable hard cover edition, and the sequel is even more rare and expensive. Nevertheless, I hope to find and read a copy of The Journey of the Eldest Son soon so that I can experience “the rest of the story.” You may be able to find a copy of either or both of these in a library near you, and Meriadoc Homeschool Library now has a beautiful copy of The Three Brothers of Ur available for check out.

Semicolon

Books we must have though we lack bread.

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