Adirondack Gold II: A Summer of Strangers - Softcover

Persis Granger

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0974208515 ISBN 13: 9780974208510

Publisher: Beaver Meadow Publishing, 2008

Synopsis

In this sequel to Adirondack Gold, thirteen-year-old Hollis Ingraham struggles to make decisions that would be difficult for an adult, let alone a boy whose family is dealing with crises. He must choose between things he wants most and things needed by his family, without the help of his usual support network. Set on an Adirondack Mountain farm in 1898, A Summer of Strangers takes the reader back to simpler times, and offers a taste of farm life as sour-and-sweet as the switchel Grandma Julia carries down to the hayfield. This coming of age book is popular with those aged 12 to 99.

About this title

About the Author:

Persis Granger and her husband engaged in subsistence farming in the Adirondacks for nearly twenty years, which undoubtedly planted the seeds for the Adirondack Gold series, the first of which was published in 2003. Granger holds a bachelor of arts degree in English and a master of science in education. She also edited and co-authored Shared Stories from Daughters of Alzheimer's: Writing a Path to Peace. Granger visits youth and adults, giving book talks, Alzheimer's disease talks and presenting readings and interactive living history programs. She also hosts writers' retreats in Thurman, NY and St. George Island, Florida. Learn more at her web site.

Review:

In this beautifully written story, Persis Granger paints a portrait of a bygone era so rich in authentic detail that the reader can almost smell the cut hay, feel the icy water of the stream on bare feet, and sit on the fence rail with twelve-year-old Hollis as he watches the colt he hopes to keep as his own. Like kids of any time, Hollis has to face difficult decisions when family need gets in the way of what he wants most. I was sad when the story ended. I wanted to linger with Hollis and watch over his shoulder as he made one more wonderful drawing of the plants and animals abounding around his home in Thurman, New York. --Adrian Fogelin, award-winning author of Crossing Jordan

Granger writes well and offers the reader intriguing mysteries. She fully develops a multi-generational cast of characters and draws the reader in to care about all of them. She can describe rural 19th century farm work and housework in a manner that raises the reader's curiosity and may make them want to try it. In this young adult novel, she renders Thurman and her characters with the affection, lyrically paced writing and attention to detail that Richard Russo brings to his stories about people and small towns across the Northeast and New England. --John Rowen, Reviewer

About this edition

• Publisher: Beaver Meadow Publishing
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0974208515
• ISBN 13: 9780974208510
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 303
• Editor: Persis Granger
• Illustrator: Laurel G. Nittinger