Happy Tuesday all!
Excited to share with you today my review for this book that blew me away! This book had so much heart I simply devoured it! Thank you so much Suzy for my invitation to this tour!🌼
My Thoughts
𝕭𝖊𝖆𝖚𝖙𝖎𝖋𝖚𝖑. 𝕮𝖔𝖒𝖕𝖊𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌. 𝕳𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖜𝖆𝖗𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖌.
This was an evocative story that I found simultaneously heartwarming and heartwrenching. 1950s North Carolina 12-year-old Sonny loves her life with her family on their cotton farm. She shares a passion for the land as well as the ability to divine water with her beloved father. When Sonny’s father meets with a tragic accident it is up to her mother, her two older brothers, and herself to maintain the family farm. In order to keep the farm a float Sonny’s mother makes a deal with their reclusive neighbor Mr. Fowler, a deal that will change everything.
This was a beautiful coming-of-age story, but it was also so much more. Sonny was a remarkable character with such a beautiful spirit. I loved her friendship with Daniel and even more than that I loved how she didn’t even really realize that he was different (for lack of a better word). Her relationship with her brothers was touching, even though Trent was a bit of a jerk.* Sidenote my oldest son is named Trent, so it was kind of funny seeing this character who definitely had A bad side with the same name* I was so conflicted when it came to Sonny’s mother. On one hand I really wanted her to open her eyes to how despicable Mr. Fowler was, and on the other hand I do realize she did not have many choices. This part of the book really made me think, I was able to get out of a bad marriage, but a lot of that was because I had an amazing support system. What happens when you don’t have that support system? Where she was in the 1950s in North Carolina where they wouldn’t even give her credit to purchase seeds? Mr. Fowler was a bigot with a heart full of hate and he made me cringe more than once.
The story was so beautifully told… Donna Everhart really brought life on this cotton farm to the pages of this book. The hard dirty work and the love for the land was so evident. But as much beauty as there was in this book, there was also so much ugliness. The racism, the bigotry, the abuse,
. Simply put this was an extremely well told story with an ending that left me satisfied.
*** many thanks to Kensington for my copy of this book ***
About the Book
For twelve-year-old Martha “Sonny” Creech, there is no place more beautiful than her family’s cotton farm. She, her two brothers, and her parents work hard on their land—hoeing, planting, picking—but only Sonny loves the rich, dark earth the way her father does. When a tragic accident claims his life, her stricken family struggles to fend off ruin—until their rich, reclusive neighbor offers to help finance that year’s cotton crop.
Sonny is dismayed when her mama accepts Frank Fowler’s offer; even more so when Sonny’s best friend, Daniel, points out that the man has ulterior motives. Sonny has a talent for divining water—an ability she shared with her father and earns her the hated nickname “water witch” in school. But uncanny as that skill may be, it won’t be enough to offset Mr. Fowler’s disturbing influence in her world. Even her bond with Daniel begins to collapse under the weight of Mr. Fowler’s bigoted taunts. Though she tries to bury her misgivings for the sake of her mama’s happiness, Sonny doesn’t need a willow branch to divine that a reckoning is coming, bringing with it heartache, violence—and perhaps, a fitting and surprising measure of justice.
Berit Talks Books 