It was almost as hard to keep track of characters' names as it is in a Russian novel.
The book was more "documentary" and not enough "novel" for my taste. With such rich fuel, the story could have been developed to a deeper level. But with dialect, character, anecdote, and an unbiased lens, the book still managed to comment on a huge number of themes: religion, progress, family, politics, art, economics, psychology, fashion, industry, stereotypes, mortality, gender, discipline, nutrition, race, fear, longing, isolation, segregation, leisure, different types of poverty and wealth, genetics, literacy, music, ignorance, education, hypocrisy, ambition…
Early in the book I noticed the curious vocabulary peppered into the text: prognathous, scrim, nicticating, turgid, blithely, protracted, aquiline, reticent, apparition, globular, surreptitiously, schismatic, escarpment, recrimination, ruminations, frowzy, derelict, cantonment, solipsist, funereally, pentatonic, lugubrious, fulminating, burgeoning, perfunctory, capacious, capitulated, Levantine, irradiate, facile, tacit... I had to get out my dictionary once or twice, which doesn't happen often. Well done, Mr. Wright.
Some favorite quotes:
- “Daniel jokes about his bookishness, but he suffers a lot of kidding from his Amish brethren. It is a way of warning him that too much reading can be a sign of worldly curiosity.” (65)
- “The center aisle, dividing the men from the women, was a gray linoleum waxed to such a gloss that it seemed to puddle in sunlit pools, like a highway mirage.” (79)
- “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God” (86)
- “The landscape is neatly divided into well-tended rectangles full of purposeful activity—the pastures, fields, barnyards, pigpens, gardens—all quilted together.” (54)
- “Dorcus [Amish host mom] was working Natasha’s [Fresh Air child's] hair into an Amish-style “French curl,” with a long braid on each side drawn into a bun in back. Natasha, in turn, was braiding the blond nylon hair of her “baby doll” into tight corn rows.” (87)
- [Host mom talking to a friend] “Franklin lost his Afro pick on the bus, and he said he just had to have a new one. Can you imagine trying to buy an Afro pick in Big Valley?...He said, ‘Mom, I can’t use a regular comb. Couldn’t we please go to the store and look?’ So I took him to the White Hall store and I was so surprised. He says, ‘Mom, they do too have Afro picks!’ Know what they were? Cake cutters, the metal kind with long tines. Franklin says it’s better than his old one!” (78)
This summary (sadly) wraps it up:
- "For most of the children, their stay in Big Valley would prove little more than a momentary calm in lives so abused by randomness. The Fresh Air Fund is sometimes criticized for giving some children who are caught in the ghetto impossible expectations for the future, and others a depressing understanding of how deprived they really are....for some of them, coming home is the beginning of a lifelong outrage." (202)
