Cold Rock River
Dec 9, 2009
Cold Rock River
Author: Jackie Lee Miles
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Cumberland House Publishing (October 1, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1581826680
ISBN-13: 978-1581826685
Another absolute winner by Jackie. In October we reviewed her first book, Roseflower Creek. Stunningly written and I highly recommend you read both of these books as quick as you can get your hands on them!
In this book Jackie weaves two different stories together and how they combine in the end is a grand surprise twist.
Adie is a young woman from the mountains of Georgia, who falls for the wrong guy too young and suddenly finds herself married and a mother at the age of 17. She also finds herself moved away from her kinfolk and then rather abandoned by her new husband.
She meets Willie Mae, an old black women with a knack for birthing babies and an old journal she carries with her everywhere. When times are quiet she reads to Adie from that journal the life story of a slave woman named Tempe.
Times are very hard for Adie and she meets up with much grief in her young life. She relishes hearing about the life of Tempe as hers was so much harder and brutal than her own that it makes her feel better about her own misfortunes.
Adie deals with loneliness, regret, near death, infidelity in her marriage, hardship and poverty. Tempe deals with slavery, brutality, murder, rape, the selling of her children and finally the end of the civil war where she finds herself on her own without home, children or family, trying to survive.
How these two lives, in different ages, meld into one story in the modern world is a surprise you never expect.
Again, though - the story is gripping, the writing is what you can't get away from. Wonderful work and I wait anxiously to hear more from Jackie in the near future.
