A Blade of Grass by Lewis DeSoto

A Blade of Grass by Lewis DeSoto
Fiction/Literature

Marit is a young British wife to Ben when they move to Africa, purchase land, and try their hand at farming. Marit keeps to herself but enjoys the luxuries of going in to town and drinking at the local hotel. This is not a peaceful life. There's a war raging on the borders of their land and Ben one day drives over a bomb, killing himself. Marit is left to fend for herself in this foreign land, with strong barriers between whites and blacks. Marit befriends her maid, Tembi, bringing her in to the house to stay and treating her as an equal. What starts is an unlikely friendship.

Tembi and Marit have many troubles to contend with, including some distrust in each other, and their friendship is pushed to the limits. The story feels so real because it's not always happy and in fact becomes quite depressing at the end. The beginning was a bit slow but about half way through it I was having troubles putting the book down because I wanted to know what was going to happen. It's interesting to read a book about Africa and the tensions there as I haven't read many books on this subject. I enjoyed it!

First Line: "First she must wash the seeds."

Rating:
(4.5/5)

The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy

The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy
Fiction

Mud is an orphaned elephant who is separated from her family and is adopted by the She-S herd. As Mud is coming into her adulthood, the elephant domain is going through one of the worst droughts in history. As the elephants meet at a watering hole, many are killed by ivory poachers. The elephants that do escape alive are separated. Mud is stuck with a small group from her adoptive family as they try to find other family members and search for the white bone, which has the power to tell all elephants where to find the second safe place, where there is water and lush vegetation where elephants will be safe.

This book is very unique in that it's told from the elephant's perspective. They can communicate as humans do through their own language but they have other means of communicating as well. They can send out infrasonic waves and each family has a mind reader. The mind reader of the family can communicate to other species, which is useful when trying to find water during a drought.

I've never read a book where the main characters are elephants. Despite being so different, the human emotions of each elephant draws the reader in quickly. I enjoyed how the elephants were named according to their family name and their prominent character traits. Each elephant lived up to their name! I was quite surprised to find that the author is a Canadian author living in Toronto! I wonder how much research she had to do about elephants before writing this book.

First Line: "All day there are glaring omens that go undetected."

Rating:
(4/5)

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
Memoir

On what seemed like a normal trip with his friends outside his home village of Mattru Jong, Sierra Leone, the rebels come into his village and start killing anything that moves. When he thinks it is safe, Ishmael and his friends head back to his Mattru Jong to search for the families but find only bodies littering the street. When they can't find their families, the group of boys search for food from nearby villages. They quickly learn that groups of boys are looked upon suspiciously because that's what the rebel forces travel as.

As they travel village to village, they receive help from unlikely sources and see more violence and death than any child should. Eventually soldiers bring the remaining boys into a village and promise them safety. Ishmael watches these soldiers clean their guns, take drugs, and watch Rambo before going out to kill rebels. When the soldiers lose too many men, they pose an ultimatum to the village. Either join us and fight or leave the village. At the age of 13, Ishmael becomes a soldier.

The story follows Ishmael as he lives the nightmare of war and then his rehabilitation. Ishmael's story is sad but it draws you in and holds your attention for the entire duration.

The majority of the book was explaining Ishmael's journey before he became a soldier. I was interested in learning about how he was rehabilitated but found that not enough of the novel focused on this. The ending left me hanging a bit too. Though it did make me look up Ishmael online.

Despite the fact that the book didn't go into as much detail as I would have liked, I couldn't put it down. I was concerned for Ishmael's well being and hoped that him and his family would be ok. It's great to see that Ishmael is trying to help other kids who have gone through what he has and bring this story to the world.

First Line: "There are all kinds of stories told about the war that made it sound as if it were happening in a faraway and different land."

Rating:

(4.5/5)