Sunday, November 10, 2019


One For the Blackbird,One For the Crow
By
Olivia Hawker
I am in an utterly and hopeless book hangover after reading this book!  Oh! My! Gosh!  I am speechless!  I Just had an "experience"!  It was more than just reading a book.  It was like going into the pages and becoming a part of the story.  It was a complete bonding with the characters, the remote and endless landscape of the Wyoming territory and with the vegetation and animal life that dwelt within that habitat.   It was an unbelievable and unforgettable encounter with an epic read. 
I don't even know how I can write a review close to worthy of this book.  There are so many emotions  I felt that were as real as if I were dealing with them myself. This is the first book I've read by Olivia Hawker and I'm in awe of her talent to pull so much out of me with her extraordinary prose.  Each page in this magnificent novel drew me deeper into the lives of the characters.  I'm just mind boggled at the intimate and minute details that created a living journey for me to travel in the pages of this book.
There are passages that blew me away with the depth and meanings they held.  Passages that made me stop and ponder.  This is one that is particularly profound:
This is a dream Beulah is having about a worm eating the leaf of a beanstalk...."The worm moved its terrible jaws and spoke. God is said to be great, the worm told me, So great you cannot see Him. But God is small, with hands like threads, and they reach for you everywhere you go.  The hands touch everything-even you, even me.  What falls never falls; what grows has grown a thousand times, and will live a thousand times more.  Wherever hand touches hand, the Oneness comes to stay.  Once God has made a thing whole, it cannot be broken again." 
The characters are unforgettable people.  They are based after the author's ancestors and are truly unique and memorable.  I so appreciated the Author's Notes and Acknowledgement added at the end of the book.  It was so interesting how she developed and came to write this amazing novel.  This is a very lengthy novel but so worth every word that's written in it.  I truly didn't want it to end.  I want to thank Lake Union and Olivia Hawker for the extreme privilege I had of reading this book!  This is my honest and heartfelt review of a book that ranks as one of my top 5 this year.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Christmas Memories By Nancy Carey Johnson If I could fill my  Christmas stocking with goodies and stories it would be filled to over flowing...