Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date.
For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now.
Narrated by Lina Patel, Daniel Passer
Richard PeckUnabridged — 3 hours, 54 minutes
Narrated by Lina Patel, Daniel Passer
Richard PeckUnabridged — 3 hours, 54 minutes
Free with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription | Cancel Anytime
Already Subscribed?
Sign in to Your BN.com Account
FREE
with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription
This unusual Civil War novel really boosts Peck's credentials as America's best living author for young adults. Not only is it a gripping yarn -- about two enigmatic women and a small Southern Illinois town in the momentous first year of the war -- but it is nearly as intricately structured as Wuthering Heights, with multiple narrators and tales-within-tales enhancing both the mystery and the wistfulness of long-ago events. — Elizabeth Ward
The book is rich in detail about life along the Mississippi and the limited, late war news that further splits communities. Peck captures the light and dark sides of the Pruitt family, the sweetness of tiny moments, the excruciating pain of a distraught mother's words. He writes life-changing scenes reminiscent of the Atlanta pilgrimage that Scarlett O'Hara makes in Gone With the Wind: Tilly and Delphine are confronted with hundreds of wounded and dying soldiers after an exhausting trip to Cairo, and, like Scarlett, roll up their sleeves and find a strength that neither knew she had. — Lynne Perri
In our Best Books citation, PW wrote, "The author crafts his characters impeccably and threads together their fates in surprising ways that shed light on the complicated events of the Civil War." Ages 10-up. (Apr.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Gr 7 Up-In the opening days of the Civil War, a genteel but worldly wise young woman and her companion step off a steamboat from New Orleans onto the dock of a provincial Illinois town. This richly told and evocatively realized novel tells how the strangers are taken into the Pruitts' home (and into their hearts), changing all of the characters' lives forever. Winner of the 2003 Scott O'Dell Award for historical fiction. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
"Imagine an age when there were still people around who'd seen U.S. Grant with their own eyes, and men who'd voted for Lincoln." Fifteen-year-old Howard Leland Hutchings visits his father's family in Grand Tower, Illinois, in 1916, and meets four old people who raised his father. The only thing he knows about them is that they lived through the Civil War. Grandma Tilly, slender as a girl but with a face "wrinkled like a walnut," tells Howard their story. Sitting up on the Devil's Backbone overlooking the Mississippi River, she "handed over the past like a parcel." It's a story of two mysterious women from New Orleans, of ghosts, soldiers, and seers, of quadroons, racism, time, and the river. Peck writes beautifully, bringing history alive through Tilly's marvelous voice and deftly handling themes of family, race, war, and history. A rich tale full of magic, mystery, and surprise. (author's note) (Fiction. 12+)
It's a riveting story that shows racism everywhere and young people facing war, not sure what side to be on or why. (Booklist, starred review)
Peck reaches new depth with this Civil War-era novel. . . (Publishers Weekly, starred review)
A rich tale full of magic, mystery, and surprise. (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)
Historical fiction fans should enter this at the top of the must-read list. (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, starred review)
The harsh realities of war are brutally related in a complex, always surprising plot that resonates on multiple levels. (he Horn Book, starred review)
This unusual Civil War novel really boosts Peck's credentials as America's best living author for young adults. (The Washington Post)
Unforgettable characters and handsome prose make this book one you won't want to miss. (Children's Literature)
In this lyrical historical novel about America before and during the Civil War, we follow 15-year-old Tilly Pruit of Illinois as she pursues her errant young brother, who has run off to enlist in the Union Army. Tilly is accompanied by Delphine, a lovely young visitor up from New Orleans. As we and Tilly discover, Delphine is not what she appears. Daniel Passer begins the book, speaking to us in the voice of Tilly's grandson, taken in 1916 to meet his grandmother for the first time. He has a pleasant, easy voice and a fine sense of a boy’s pacing as he tells his part of the story. Lina Patel also excels with the many characters and the emotional complexities of the plot. Her Northern country people are plain without being caricatures, and her Southerners convince without too many drippy drawls. This personal story of the great national schism involves us in all ways. A.C.S. 2005 YALSA Selection © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine
| BN ID: | 2940169119701 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Random House |
| Publication date: | 03/23/2004 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Age Range: | 8 - 11 Years |
The Rob Roy was full to the gills with passengers. They must have been Yankees hurrying home in case war trapped them. And there were those people who seemed always on the river, restless travelers. The railings were jammed tight with dark figures. I saw the firefly glow of the gentlemen's seegars. I imagined I saw diamonds within the ladies' flowing cloaks, and emeralds in their hair.
I couldn't picture where they'd come from, where they were going. Did I know enough to wonder?
We worked our way forward to see Noah and Curry and the other boys running up the gangplank for the freight. We all waved and waved till the pilot up on the Texas deck bothered to wave back. What a sight it all was, this brilliance in the velvet night.
People were crazy to hear the news. They called up to the passengers leaning on the rails. "What's it like down yonder? What's conditions at New Orleans?"
"Port's open!" someone called back. "Business as usual. Still shippin' cotton. But we was boarded and searched at Cairo."
We drank it all in and turned over every word. Then lo and behold, two figures were coming down the plank. Will I ever forget that first sight of them? Two figures, backlit by the boat, come down to us by lantern light.
A young lady was in the lead, in ballooning crinolines. Heavens, I'd never seen such skirts -- rustling taffeta stretched wide over hoops. Her top part was encased in a cut-plush cape, with tassels. And her bonnet. My stars, I pushed people aside to get a look at it. A bonnet too dark to make out except for the ice-blue satin it was lined with, and a whole corsage of artificial violets planted inside next to her face. An enormous satin bow tied beneath her chin.
And then her face, framed with long dark curls beside the violets. Her eyes were large and darkly fringed. Her Cupid's bow of a mouth too dark to be as nature intended. She must be from New Orleans. No town between here and there could have produced her. The slant of the gangplank all but upturned her. She clung to the rope with one gloved hand. From the other hung a round hatbox covered in elegant wallpaper.
She turned back to the young woman behind her. I saw this other one only in silhouette at first. She was narrower, darker, shrouded in a long plain cloak. In place of a bonnet or a traveling hat, her head was tied up in a bandanna. It was of some fine silken material, and the tails of the knot were artfully arranged Her hands were full of various boxes and reticules. The two of them murmured together.
Behind them a deckhand staggered under a humpbacked Saratoga trunk. At the end of the plank he very nearly stepped through the young lad's hoops. When he swung the trunk off his back, it lit in the mud.
By then, I was standing as close to the young lady as I am to you. She turned right to me. "Il est saoul!" she said. Her great fringed eyes grew wider.
"Come again?" I said, in a trance.
"He's drunk, that one. All men are drunkards! And the men on this boat, all of them spit, spit, spit." She pointed back to the Rob Roy in case I'd missed seeing it.
