Book review: The Lost History of Stars
…a painful growth to womanhood…
Book review:
The Lost History of Stars
by Dave Boling (b1951)
Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2017
340 pages
This is a delicate story about sturdy people who try to preserve loving relationships in a brutal war.
It is an emotionally rasping challenge to read so much reserved conversation about the monstrous incivilities, tribulations, and hardships of Dutch farmers and their families who opposed the British Tommies during the Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa.
Lettie, the 14-year-old oldest daughter on the Venter family homestead, cannot avoid her painful growth to womanhood. Against the agonizing deprivations and losses caused by the war, she matches her innocent courage and her freshening longing for love.
Bina is a young African woman who teaches Lettie that “deeds live.”
In time Lettie learns that deeds live in hearts, and that hearts can be broken, and that lives can be remade with loved ones who survive.
(Image courtesy of Boer War Colourised Photographs on Wikimedia)
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2019 All rights reserved.
Book review: Seven Gothic Tales
by Isak Dinesen,
such lush and memorable stories…
click here
–
Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *