Characters Up a Tree

Problems make for interesting plot.

Writing gurus will tell budding authors: "Get your character up a tree. And put tigers under the tree."

Janette Rallison's Just One Wish is a pretty quick and light read. In the story, Annika promises her little brother (who is dying from cancer) that she will introduce him to his favorite Hollywood actor: Steve Raleigh, aka Teen Robin Hood. At times, Annika goes through a mad-cap adventure to find, meet, and finally convince teen idol, Steve, to come back with her to meet her brother.

Rallison very nicely uses the put-your-character-up-a-tree technique to keep the plot going. Especially for what could have been a boring drive from California to Nevada in Chapter 12. Here we see Annika and Steve finally on their way to visit her little brother. That's when they're about to be put up a tree (figuratively, of course!). Annika is driving when she realizes that the paparazzi is following them.

Steve looked at the speedometer for the first time. "You're going going ninety-five. If you get pulled over going twenty-five miles over the speed limit, it's a criminal offense."

"Really? How do you know that?"

Steve smiled. "Don't ask. Just slow down a little."

"I'm trying to lose that car behind us. It's one of the guys from the restaurant."

With some fancy driving (perhaps reminiscent of the Dukes of Hazzard?), Annika manages to shake her pursuer. They are once more on their way. But, don't forget the tigers... Chapter 12 ends with:

Everything was looking up.

But half an hour outside of Barstow, in the middle of the Majave Desert, the car broke down.

Taken from:
Rallison, Janette. Just One Wish (2009), pp. 180, 185.

How did I rate this book? Readable (although a bit unrealistic)

A Sense of Doom

This next selection comes from Frank Capra's autobiography. The book is a fascinating read. A born storyteller, it's no wonder that the man made some classic movies.

Here he is recounting his early years (before getting into the movie-making business). His immigrant family had a hard life trying to survive in their new country. But finally, things were looking up...

On sun drenched February morning in 1917, Papa walked through his fifteen-acre lemon grove on the high, frost-free foothills above Sierra Madre, surveying his beautiful trees dripping with large yellowing fruit. A $5,000 crop, Papa estimated, more than enough to make the last mortgage payment due in two weeks. Tomorrow he would gather up pickers in Monrovia to harvest the bountiful yield. God smiled on him.

The first three years he had worked the grove alone, from dawn to sundown: pruning, watering, hauling manure from the Valley, discing behind his horse--and hoeing until he couldn't straighten up. But two years ago he had ordered Mama and Ann to quit work and live with him as the ranch--a happy day. No more would they ever have to slave, he promised. I'm sure that Papa must have counted his blessings that beautiful early spring day...

It's at this point that you begin to think that things are too perfect. What is going to spoil this picture?! You can just feel the shadow making its way towards the valley...

About an hour after breakfast, my seventeen-year-old sister Ann, the youngest and most beloved of the family, heard a strange and fearful whirring noise in the grove. She called Papa. No answer. Investigating, she traced the whir to the well-pump house. She looked inside--and froze in horror. Papa was dead, his chest crushed and edged between the teeth of two large gears. the long, black left, from the racing motor to the pump, was chewed up and wrapped crazily around his body...

Papa's dream of moving his family out of the ghetto and onto his beloved farm was shattered...

Taken from:
Capra, Frank. The Name Above the Title (1971), pp. 8-9.

How did I rate this book? Good

A Magic Deeper Still

I will let this piece speak for itself...

At that moment they heard from behind them a loud noise—a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a giant's plate.... The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; and there was no Aslan.

"Who's done it?" cried Susan. "What does it mean? Is it more magic?"

"Yes!" said a great voice from behind their backs. "It is more magic." They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.

"Oh, Aslan!" cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad....

"But what does it all mean?" asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.

"It means," said Aslan, "that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward."

Taken from:
Lewis, C.S. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), p. 163.

How did I rate this book? 5 stars