The Distant Land of My Father

Amazon.com

The Distant Land of My Father begins like a fairy tale: "My father was a millionaire in Shanghai in the 1930s.... On the day he was born, in the province of Shantung, neighbors presented my missionary grandparents, the only Americans for miles, with noodles in great abundance and one hundred chicken eggs, in honor of their son's birth." To the young Anna Schoene, life in Shanghai is indeed magical. There are servants, a luxurious villa, a beautiful mother who smells like Chanel No. 5, and a young, handsome, polo-playing father. Unfortunately, her father is also a smuggler and speculator who loves his freewheeling life more than anything (or anyone) else. Despite warnings, Schoene refuses to leave Shanghai even after the Japanese invade, and his wife and child retreat to Los Angeles; later, he survives imprisonment and torture only to once again choose Shanghai over his family--this time with the Communists moving in.

Bo Caldwell's sepia-toned evocation of 1930s Shanghai is lovely and physical, and given the built-in drama of its setting, this first novel ought to have the vividness of a classic movie. Yet the characters remain oddly flat while world events swirl around them. Great chunks of historical exposition seem largely undigested, while Schoene's final change of heart fails to ring true. In a sense, however, these shortcomings are beside the point. The Distant Land of My Father is above all a tragic romance, albeit one with an unusual love interest. Schoene is so besotted with Shanghai that his wife and daughter are scarcely as real to him as the city itself. --Mary Park

Book Description

Anna, the narrator of this riveting first novel, lives in a storybook world: exotic pre- World War II Shanghai, with handsome young parents, wealth, and comfort. Her father, the son of missionaries, leads a charmed and secretive life, though his greatest joy is sharing his beloved city with his only daughter. Yet when Anna and her mother flee Japanese-occupied Shanghai to return to California, he stays behind, believing his connections and a little bit of luck will keep him safe.
Through Anna's memories and her father's journals we learn of his fall from charismatic millionaire to tortured prisoner, in a story of betrayal and reconciliation that spans two continents. The Distant Land of My Father, a breathtaking and richly lyrical debut, unfolds to reveal an enduring family love through tragic circumstances.

National Bestseller

Customer Reviews:

Distant Land Made Near.......2007-08-13

This is a truly remarkable first novel. The author, Bo Caldwell, has made the city of Shanghai of the 1930's come alive, not only in he visual aspects of the city but in the ambience of the time. The dharacter of the young girl is so well developed that it is difficult to believe that this is not autobiographical rather than fiction. Her complex and conflicting emotions about her father are completely believable and even vicariously experienced in a sense. The character of the mother, too, is welll developed and, like that of the daughter, very sympathetic. My only adverse criticism is that the character of the father is not sufficiently developed to be completely convincing.

mostly boring.......2007-06-29

While the premise of THE DISTANT LAND OF MY FATHER intrigued me - an American family living in Shanghai in the 1930's when the Japanese invaded China - this book took way too long to pull me in. Although written in the first person, the author's writing style is detached and impersonal. This book reads as if it's a piece for the evening news - telling the reader this or that detail, offering only small glimpses of the main characters' inner lives. The reader is told, not made to experience, what's going on. Also, the author's overly-detailed writing bored me to tears. The research Caldwell did preparing for this book was quite evident, but it would have been appreciated more if she hadn't gone on for pages upon pages detailing a barrage of Shanghai minutia - i.e., the order of streets and buildings were so thoroughly detailed I had to pinch myself to stay awake. (This book was my book-group's June selection, which is the only reason I kept on reading.) Finally, somewhere around page 250, the plot became suddenly more engaging and I found myself actually interested in the characters and what was to become of them.

In the end, I found THE DISTANT LAND OF MY FATHER a somewhat interesting read. But this book could have been wonderful - had the author written in a deeper point of view, and made the dialogue more engaging from the start.

WHY ISN'T THIS BOOK BETTER KNOWN?.......2007-06-23

This book is wonderful and unique, it is hard to believe it is fiction - Bo Caldwell has us seeing, feeling and smelling Shanghai and Southern California in the 40's and 50's. This book should be made into a movie - at the very least it should have been a number one bestseller for weeks on end. Everyone I have recommended it to has been blown away. I am looking forward to her next effort.

Nostalgia.......2007-05-07

Strained relationships between middle-aged parents and their daughter are the focus of a story whose main interest for me was the reliving of the period from WWII into the 50s and 60s, with some mostly accurate information about the customs and values of a now-longago time in Shanghai and Southern California. As I am a resident of the Pasadena area the local geography brought to life a story that was otherwise not terribly compelling of a daughter's ambiguous relationship with her father and grandmother. The somewhat shady experiences of the father in Shanghai were perhaps purposely not clearly defined. All in all, it's a nice book to take and read on a long trip.

I trust you will be just as Wowed as I was!.......2007-02-23

Let me first explain how I came upon reading DISTANT LAND. I was in Vroman's bookstore in Pasadena, CA and noticed the book being promoted. I actually bought it thinking it was a memoir and only upon getting it home realized that it was a fictional memoir, in fact a first novel. Then I noted in Vroman's magazine that each year the city of Pasadena picks one book for the whole city to read, so that the city has a common cultural experience. For 2007 that book is DISTANT LAND. At the time I did not know the city of South Pasadena plays a significant roll in the narrative. Then next I had to over come the fact that I am not particularly found of novels told in the first person as DISTANT LANDS is narrated by Anna who we meet as a young girl in Shanghai in love with her surroundings and with her father. A Father who appears at ease with being a blond, blue eyed native born Chinese (born of missionary parents). The novel is epic (taking place from the late 30s to the early 80s), yet intimate and a very unique emotional telling of Anna's life and her Father's love of Shanghai which we discover consumes him as he commits one poor value judgment over another. The book is brilliant in creating a sense of place and character, you are constantly surprised and will find the last 100 pages will rip tears from right out of your eyes. I understand this is Ms. Caldwell's first novel and it is simply an amazing, entertaining, and enlightening achievement in what some might classify as an historical novel. But it is really in the end an intimate story of emotions, choices, and consequences, told through terribly real people that have to learn that love is
overcoming the serious faults of those we should (and must) love. The distant land of Anne's father may have been Shanghai, China, but it was really the emotional distance she felt when her father chooses his love for Shanghai over her and her mother. You come to fell this must be a true memoir as is so believable. This is an outstanding book and I trust you will be just as Wowed by it as I was.

Average customer rating:

Should have been "Lord Crowley's Novel"
Admirable Achievement
Great Idea
A Fine and Thoroughly Disappointing Novel
An intriguing novel that elegantly intertwines mystery with history...

Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land
John Crowley
Manufacturer: William Morrow
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0060556587
Release Date: 2005-06-14

Customer Reviews:

Should have been "Lord Crowley's Novel".......2007-08-20

It's a gross presumption for me to scribble a few lines about a book that Mr. Crowley gave time and blood to write. But reading time is limited, and these reviews help point out what should be read and what perhaps left aside. Read "Little, Big" and others before this one. The idea underlying "Byron's Novel" is faulty, leaving us with the unavoidable outcome. The book should have been much better. How so?

Mr. Crowley's book is faulty on the first level because one cannot write a strong work as a ventriloquist. Nominally, this book is an imagined facsimile of a novel that Byron could have written. Mr. Crowley called himself a ventriloquist in this work, and we end up at a double or triple remove, too far to reach emotion, and thus bloodless. So must it be, always be, when we write as another and not ourselves, for we cannot reach our own heart when we create another's imaginary heart. Throughout the reading of the book, we long for the true authorial voice, but it never comes.

The book is faulty on the second level - the Ada level - as well. Granting that the author is ventriloquizing, we play along with his game, but he then digresses from that Byron-novel with imaginary Notes to it, supposedly by Byron's daughter, Ada. Yet this too is bloodless, an academic's comment that very slightly reveals the person underneath. From the Ada Notes, we learn nothing of Ada of any real import, nor do we feel what the real Ada could have felt - her rage at dying and its unfairness, her bone-wracking pain, and her (supposed) longing for the great and famous father she could never know and who apparently abandoned her. Approaching the book's end, I was hoping (praying) for blood-infusion, perhaps in the form of Ada herself writing the last chapter of an unfinished novel by Byron, and (inadvertently? consciously?) writing in her own longing, pain, and rage. Then would father and daughter, in this work of art, break through time, separation, and death, to a fusion of great souls. And then we, the reader of Crowley's book, would perhaps know Ada for the first time, and feel something.

The book is faulty on a third level - its second level of digression (!) -an epistolary fragment set in the present day, interspersed through the Byron-novel and Ada-notes. Perhaps authors love to imagine the effect of their works on the culture, academia, and the public - but the author with power to say great things, as Mr. Crowley has, cannot do so, at least in publication. Here, Crowley says that he needed to show the lost text being discovered and contemporary response. Why is this so? It is not so. It is a way for Crowley to perhaps daydream about what would happen if a lost Byron were found. It doesn't belong in this book, and detracts much from it, again being emotionally detached and (this time) with wholly uninteresting persons, even including its nominal parallels to the Bryon-Ada relationship.

What should this book have been? It should have been Mr. Crowley's book, not Byron's or anyone else's. If he wanted here to write a ripping yarn, as he said he did in interview, then he should have done so without academic mediation. He could have, and it could have been very good. I do not believe that such tales have slipped beyond our horizon, so that authors have to couch them as from a simpler time. We've not grown so advanced and modern to be unmoved by tales of incident. If the author wanted to explore Ada's point of view, then write her into the story. To sum up, I guess I want to say that Byron here is a disfiguring crutch for the author (whom I greatly admire) that Mr. Crowley should have thrown away, or hidden from us.

Admirable Achievement.......2007-07-30

The technique of a story within a story is not new. In fact, it goes back to Sanskrit literature. Shakespeare used it effectively. Gide's "The Counterfeiters" carried on the theme and, bringing it into the modern era, John Gardner used it in his "October Light" and Margaret Atwood in "The Blind Assassin."

I admire both Gardner and Atwood but, in both novels, I found the book within a book distracting.

In Crowley's hands we actually have three stories, each playing off against the others and it is an admirable achievement.

A collection of papers alleged to have belonged to Ada Lovelace, developer of the world's first computer program and estranged daughter of Lord Byron, is offered for sale. They include one page attributed to Byron and a number of others covered with strings of numerals. What is not known in the beginning is that Lovelace found and preserved the only novel ever written by her father--one which actually explains much which mystified her about their relationship. Though she was dying at the time, Ada encoded and annotated the novel, hoping it might be preserved for future generations.

Smith, whose relationship with her own father mirrors that of Ada and Byron, enlists his help in deciphering and authenticating the material. The collaboration brings them to a closer understanding of one another.

Great Idea.......2007-05-12

Great idea, that wore thin after a while. I loved the parts with the lovers communicating via email about the discoveries regarding the book. I loved the background of Byron's daughter's story. I didn't really get into the actual "novel" that much. Nice try though.

A Fine and Thoroughly Disappointing Novel.......2006-12-07

This novel is virtually devoid of the mystery and depth of meaning of Crowley's best novels, which I consider to be Little, Big and the Aegypt series.

Technically, it is a marvel, and the mock Byron novel is a rip-roaring read, and even the email exchanges among the principal contemporary characters are interesting; but the book as a whole is terribly predictable (the Byron novel itself being predictably unpredictable). Considering that the novel includes an account of intense literary sleuthing, there is no suspense or sense of discovery. From the beginning you know that the Byron novel has been found, so the sense of excitement the characters feel and express in their email exchanges is totally defused en route to the reader.

The book does explore the nature of self, but for Crowley in a very simplistic dualistic fashion (Byron (or rather his alter-ego in the novel-within-a-novel) in the end revealed as a split personality ); but essentially the book is about daughters coming to terms with absent, troubled fathers, which is admittedly a moving subject, and I suppose Crowley handles that aspect with subtlety and depth, so certain people will certainly find at least parts of the novel moving, but it's just too specific a subject to carry the weight of the entire novel, which in the end I considered little more than an academic display of technical virtuosity, an excercise in various voices.

An intriguing novel that elegantly intertwines mystery with history..........2006-06-24

After reading most of the reviews about Crowley's novel, it is clear to me that the greatest misconception that one can have about this story is that it was written to be a recreation of Lord Byron's lost novel and that alone. When in fact, the story Crowley tells within this book holds a much deeper resonance than that of just simply capturing a largely unknown piece of history and giving life to it. This story breathes with the diversity of a great many qualities, both historically and modernly significant; qualities like passion, strength, loss and deception. Crowley indulges his crafted words throughout this novel with both a sense of romanticism and of modernism. He weaves an intricate fantasy of what Byron's novel could have been while ingeniously informing the reader of Byron's history and staging its creation through the communication of modern characters. I thought this novel was nothing less than brilliant. Once you understand and appreciate the intricacy of significance that Crowley has created within this novel, you will name it brilliant as well.

A Daughter of the Land (Library of Indiana Classics)

Average customer rating:

A different feel from her other work
Daughter of the Land
Superb!!!!
Superb!!!!

A Daughter of the Land (Library of Indiana Classics)
Gene Stratton-Porter
Manufacturer: Indiana University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0253211387

Customer Reviews:

A different feel from her other work.......2005-12-03

This story is definitely edgier than a lot of Gene Stratton-Porter's other work. I hated it the first time I read it, but I went back and read it again as a grown up and was surprised. The story seems to have more depth, and if anything, the mistakes and problems of all of the characters are more realistic than many of the stories she wrote. You believe people would act this way...even though it is a bit of a soap opera. Things work out, but not without the heroine really growing from experience.

Daughter of the Land.......2000-03-16

In many ways I preferred this book to A Girl of the Limberlost. It was less gaudily emotional but interestingly, the heroine's parents are also less than satisfactory, and the story honestly portray's the heroine's own difficulty loving her daughter as much as her son. Still, I was left with no real understanding of why she discarded the wealthy suitor for the boor! But it seemed a fairly accurate portrayal of society of the time.

Superb!!!!.......1999-03-17

I loved this book almost as much as Laddie, and place it right next to A Girl of the Limberlost. The story touched me, and every girl that reads Stratton-Porter books must read this masterpiece. Touching!!!

Superb!!!!.......1999-03-17

Sandino's Daughters: Testimonies of Nicaraguan Women in Struggle

Average customer rating:

A Must-Read!
Interesting reading, but very, very dated.

Sandino's Daughters: Testimonies of Nicaraguan Women in Struggle
Margaret Randall , and Lynda Yanz
Manufacturer: Rutgers University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

History | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0813522145

Book Description

First published in 1981 in the wake of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) revolution in Nicaragua, Sandino's Daughters can now be seen not as a triumph of revolutionary ideals, but as a triumph of the spirit. Through a series of interviews with participants at all levels in the resistance, Margaret Randall recounts the lives of ordinary women who became pillars of strength and perseverance during their decades-long involvement in the Sandinista struggle against the Somoza dictatorship. Believing firmly that women's liberation was inextricably linked with national liberation, many of these women were in the vanguard of the movement inspired by Augusto Sandino. At the peak of revolutionary activity, women from all classes and backgrounds comprised 30 percent of the Sandinista army. For many of these women, politics became one with the personal. Hindsight perhaps offers the greatest irony of the women's alliance with the FSLN in the fact that it was a woman, Violeta Chamorro, who challenged and defeated the Sandinistas in the free elections of 1990. Though lured by the revolutionary quixotism of a promise that lasted slightly more than a decade, the women of Sandino's Daughters will stand as a monument to all those who yearn to be free.

Customer Reviews:

A Must-Read!.......2001-01-14

Sandino's daughters is required reading for anyone who wants to understand the history of the Nicaraguan revolution and for feminists everywhere! The stories in this book are sometimes painful, sometimes triumphant, but always powerful. This is a classic and a beautiful book.

Interesting reading, but very, very dated........1999-07-29

Randall's examination of the role women played in the Nicaraguan revolution is interesting for its unique look at a fairly commonplace civil war fought in the klieg lights of the Cold War. The author interviewed many women who had spent years working with and for the FSLN and later became involved in the Sandanista government.

That the book was first published in 1981, so soon after the Sandanistas assumed power and before the term "Contras" had become ubiquitous, gives it an eery, time-warp feel. Read from the perspective of 1999, the frequent use of words like "comrade", "cells", and "revolutionary struggle" seems rather quaint.

This book is not really journalism in the traditional sense, as the author has little interest in exploring the possible government-related problems of post-Somoza Nicaragua. But the overall reading experience does reinforce the old adage that journalism is the first draft of history.

Book Description

The surprising truth about women and intermarriage in 19th-Century California

Until recently, most studies of the colonial period of the American West have focused on the activities and agency of men. Now, historian MarÃa RaquÃ©l Casas examines the role of Spanish-Mexican women in the development of California. She finds that, far from being pawns in a male-dominated society, Californianas of all classes were often active and determined creators of their own destinies, finding ways to choose their mates, to leave unsatisfactory marriages, and to maintain themselves economically.

Using a wide range of sources in English and Spanish, Casas unveils a picture of women's lives in these critical decades of California's history. She shows how many Spanish-Mexican women negotiated the precarious boundaries of gender and race to choose Euro-American husbands, and what this intermarriage meant to the individuals involved and to the larger multiracial society evolving from California's rich Hispanic and Indian past. Casas's discussion ranges from California's burgeoning economy to the intimacies of private households and ethnically mixed families. Here we discover the actions of real women of all classes as they shaped their own identities.

Married to a Daughter of the Land is a significant and fascinating contribution to the history of women in the American West and to our understanding of the complex role of gender, race, and class in the Borderlands of the Southwest.

Average customer rating:
A Daughter of the Land
Gene Stratton Porter
Manufacturer: Norilana Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1934169463

Book Description

A Daughter of the Land (1918) by Gene Stratton Porter is, above all, a love song of a woman and the land from which she sprung.

Kate Bates, tireless and hardworking, strapping and robust, stubborn and headstrong, is a sterling example of the American work ethic, the youngest daughter of a tight-fisted land baron -- Adam Bates, the Land King of Bates Corners, Hartley, Indiana -- and the sibling of a whole brood of Bates sons and daughters. The family has an intense relationship with the many acres of land they possess. Kate is the only one who rebels against her father, running away to make a difficult life for herself on her own terms -- and to escape the one man she cannot have and who has touched her heart.

Her world is filled with "man's work," with tough loves and passionate hates, with seasons of cultivating land other than her own, despair, disappointment, and fulfillment in the eleventh hour. All throughout, Kate makes the best of things and "takes the wings of morning" until she can truly fly.

Book Description

Akin to Alice McDermott, Regina McBride has crafted a gem that explores exile and memory, and the ways in which passion transcends time and distance.

She tries to remember her mother's voice and the pitch and treble of it passes through her; the rhythm of it so clear that for a moment they are...connected by frail strings.

So begins The Land of Women, and we are swept into Fiona O'Faolain's last summer in Ireland, the season of her burgeoning sexuality. It is a time, too, when mother and daughter step toward friendship among the voluminous gowns they make for local brides. Yet that giddy summer also delivers betrayal. Fiona's journey from the shame that ended her girlhood takes her to Santa Fe and to Carlos Aragon, a restorer of antiquities, whose ancestry is mysteriously linked to hers. As he explores their pasts with the precision of an artisan, Fiona must face her excruciating memory.

In The Land of Women the past lives in the present, and physical and emotional geography touch.

Download Description

"Akin to Alice McDermott, Regina McBride has crafted a gem that explores exile and memory, and the ways in which passion transcends time and distance. She tries to remember her mother's voice and the pitch and treble of it passes through her; the rhythm of it so clear that for a moment they are...connected by frail strings. So begins The Land of Women, and we are swept into Fiona O'Faolain's last summer in Ireland, the season of her burgeoning sexuality. It is a time, too, when mother and daughter step toward friendship among the voluminous gowns they make for local brides. Yet that giddy summer also delivers betrayal. Fiona's journey from the shame that ended her girlhood takes her to Santa Fe and to Carlos Aragon, a restorer of antiquities, whose ancestry is mysteriously linked to hers. As he explores their pasts with the precision of an artisan, Fiona must face her excruciating memory. In The Land of Women the past lives in the present, and physical and emotional geography touch. "

Customer Reviews:

A bit lost in this land.......2007-08-04

Expate Irish Fiona leaves her mother Jane who has slept with her boyfriend. Ends up in the American Southwest (huh?!) and meets Carlos Aragon- who has a passion for Spanish ships wrecked off the coast of Ireland. Get the connection? It's a long time making it. Well, just an OK read. 4- at best.

Definitely Worth Reading.......2006-08-06

I picked up The Land of Women on a lark and I'm glad I did. This is the first book by McBride that I have read and was quite affected by it. McBride is an extremely talented writer -- very nuanced descriptions with almost a rhythm to the writing.

The relationship between Fiona and her mother is extremely complicated and mutlilayered, and McBride illustrates it perfectly without cliches or being excessively overt.

The story has a sort of haunting quality that McBride totally pulls off. I can't wait to read her other novels.

A Troubled Landscape.......2003-08-16

Fiona O'Faolain is a troubled young woman, struggling with issues from her childhood, a difficult relationship with her mother Jane, and with her father Ronan, who never married her mother but flitted around the world always out of reach. And with Irish mythology. And with the mysteries of dress-making, working with cloth, with colors and textures. And with the haunting memories of her first love, Michael, her awakening, and the terrible way it ended. Now she is living in Santa Fe, lost as it were in haunting memories, and unable to pick up with her life.

That is the plot in a nutshell. The story weaves back and forth in time. It is written in an elevated "literary" style, long sentences laden with adjectives, intense descriptions of colors, odors, textures, fabrics and fastenings. It is as though the author were painting the scenes rather than writing them. Sometimes it becomes just a bit overdone, over-wrought. The young girl's emotions are portrayed, lived and relived, almost to hysteria.

Still, author McBride is a talented writer and she manages to make it work. Somehow she manages to bring together different worlds and cultures and characters to create a unified story. You may not grasp all the symbolism, at least not all at once, but you will enjoy the experience. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

An exploration of myth and mysteryý.......2003-05-31

In her second novel, McBride once again uses the lyrical imagery that so infused her first novel, The Nature of Water and Air, lifting the Land of Women into the realm of mythology. In a subtle exploration of romantic love, McBride also tackles the bonds between a mother and a daughter and how they determine lifelong affection or loss. Fiona remembers the scent of her mother, "the pale smells of her mother's skin and hair, a smell like new muslin washed in salt water and left to dry in the wind".

In the case of single mother Jane O'Faolin and her only daughter, Fiona, their early relationship is clearly a product of a lonely life in a beachside cottage and Jane's youth in a nearby orphanage. Yet their lives are filled with the bounty of nature and the wildness of the ocean, as Jane makes her living sewing exotic dresses for brides-to-be, pouring all her energy into these fantastic works of art. And Fiona has a similar talent, musing over the lush and sensual fabrics that so inspire her imagination. Sharing this creative gift allows mother and daughter another language, one that speaks in sensation and beauty, without words.

With only the occasional presence of a father, as a child, Fiona's primary relationship is with her mother. As years go by and Fiona emerges into young adulthood and sexual awareness, she discovers that the wild and moody Jane has feet of clay. Through her own selfishness and carelessness during this delicate time, Jane betrays her daughter and Fiona flees across the ocean to her father in New Mexico. There she lives among the muted shades of a desert landscape, yet haunted by the memories of Ireland.

When Fiona receives news of her mother's death, she is drawn back into the haunted a past she has so long denied. Thus, Fiona has ignored her own sexuality that has closed like a flower. Then Fiona meets Carlos Aragon and her latent sexuality reawakens. He muses about a place in Spain, Galicia, "where the terran changes to verdant green and the air is charged with salt from the sea, as a piece of Ireland has seeded in the shore of Spain". Carlos has an ancestor, once shipwrecked off the shores of Ireland, who was reputedly rescued by three women. From the mythological Land of Women, they loved him back to health. The returning sailor could never forget that love for the rest of his days, always longing for that love

Haunted by night after night of erotic dreams, Fiona must find a way to open her heart to her long repressed experiences as a young woman at the blush of first love. Exploring the truth of her own female power, Fiona is overwhelmed by intense feelings, as well as the warning behind the allure of this awakening: "Paradise costs; it cannot be entered recklessly". And Fiona has paid dearly for the heady rush into the secret places of romantic love.

Book Description

While her mother is in the army, Sumi is living with her grandmother, on East Blossom Hill. Perched on her favorite rock, Sumi watches trains wind through the valley below, hears the lonely sound of their whistles piercing the air, and longs for the day her mother will return. The train whistle reminds Sumi's grandmother of a time when a train played an important role in her life too: long ago in Korea, when she and her family escaped Seoul at the last moment before the war came. In poetic language and exquisite paintings, PEACEBOUND TRAINS evokes the landscape and people of Korea and a special grandmother-granddaughter relationship.

Customer Reviews:

Great book!.......2002-12-13

Sumi is a Korean-American girl who lives with her grandmother, whom she calls Harmony (which means grandmother in Korean), on East Blossom Hill. Her mother is in the army and Sumi is homesick for her. Sumi watches the trains in the valley below hoping that someday her mother will be on one. The train whistle reminds Sumi's grandmother of when the Korean War took place. She and her family escaped from Seoul, Korea just before the war came. This marked a very sorrowful time in Harmony's life because she had to leave her husband behind in Seoul to travel to Pusan, which was safe. Though her husband loved her, he insisted that he needed to take part in the war by being a soldier.
I like this book because it has great description. You can read it when you want to read a good book but you don't have too much time to read. It is a mixture between a chapter book and a picture book. The illustrations are amazing. The writer involoves you in the story so you can imagine everything that is happening as if it was happening to you. It was very easy for me to put myself in the place of the characters in the book so I could "be in the story".
This is an excellent book. It is the best picture or short story I've ever read. The pictures illustrate the writing well and add something to the book. I would recommend it to anyone over the age of 9. It is a very emotional book and the author clearly describes the sad events in the characters' lives.

A though provoking history lesson for readers of all ages........1997-03-26

This is a magnificent book for readers of all ages to enjoy and explore. Younger children may enjoy it on it's simplest level of a child missing a mother. Older readers will enjoy learning about the effects of war on family and friends. Everyone will savor the gracious art of the illustrator and will feel the story through his heartfelt interpretation of the author's words. Haemi Balgassi has truly written this story from her heart and tears and we are more than fortunate to be able share her family's history. Every classroom should own a copy of this wonderful history lesson

A beautifully written & illustrated glimpse of human history.......1996-11-16

In this profoundly moving and beautifully illustrated picture storybook, Haemi Balgassi tells the story of the train which carried South Korean citizens south, away from the reach of North Korean invading troops. Structured as a story within a story, the book carries with it a sense of history, the terror and loss of war, and the hope that causes the most damaged humans to live for the future. This book is a TRIUMPH!

An excellent choice for classroom discussions........1996-09-20

I teach 3rd and 4th grade accelerated reading programs, and recommend this book heartily. Very moving and powerful, and the art is beautiful, too.

Daughter of the Regiment: Memoirs of a Childhood in the Frontier Army, 1878-1898

Average customer rating:

Excellent insight of military life in the Old West

Daughter of the Regiment: Memoirs of a Childhood in the Frontier Army, 1878-1898
Mary Leefe Laurence
Manufacturer: University of Nebraska Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Women | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Book Description

The young daughter of an English-born U. S. infantry officer on the post–Civil War frontier, Mary Leefe Laurence had the childhood of an army nomad, accompanying the regiment from south Texas to the Canadian border. In faithfully recording her travels, she offers extensive and unique insight into life as a child and adolescent in the twilight of the Indian-fighting army.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent insight of military life in the Old West.......1998-06-18

Mary Leefe Laurence' childhood experiences on various military posts during the American Indian Wars, 1878-1890 was facinianting because it "fleshed out" the American soldier of the period and filled in the blanks of life on a remote Western post when the men were not fighting Indians. Ms. Laurence' Victorian politeness still left gaps that today's writers would have filled in. Mr. Smith's excellent editing and annotations caused me to read this book with two bookmarks to gather every bit of inforation available, much the same way I would read one of Dan Thrapp's books on this period.

Average customer rating:

A Daughter of the Land
Gene Stratton Porter
Manufacturer: Norilana Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

A Girl of the Limberlost

ASIN: 1934169471

Book Description

A Daughter of the Land (1918) by Gene Stratton Porter is, above all, a love song of a woman and the land from which she sprung.

And always, the land, in its glory, beckons.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books