Back Creek: A Novelby Leslie Goetsch
Genre: YA
Published: Bancroft Press 2008
Pages: 226
Synopsis from Goodreads:
It's the summer of 1975. Eighteen-year-old Grace Barnett knows she should be preparing to leave for college in September. But a strange Memorial Day boating accident on the creek near her Virginia home she s the only witness to the apparent suicide kicks off a series of events that will define her family's future as well as her emerging view of life.My Thoughts:
I truly loved every single word written in this brilliant coming-of-age story. The main character Grace is a person some of us book geeks can totally relate to.
High school wasn't of great interest to me: I was far more absorbed by the fiction I read than the fiction I lived.
p.11
How can you not connect with this young girl? She lives inside her two favorite novels,
Wuthering Heights and
Jane Eyre. They're the one constant in her life that she can depend on, that and Back Creek itself. Within this story is another character that you will grow to love and that is Back Creek. Even though this is a fictionalized sleepy town, you feel as if you've been there on your travels to the south and that it would be a place to welcome you home. Grace's life is tumultuous, not by her own doing, but rather by the sudden departure of her mother, the sudden reappearance of her wayward sister, and her father's alcoholic binges.
Remembering my berry-picking made me realize I was always trying to make peace through gifts--drawings I made, unusual shells I found on the shore, even a heron's feather. I guess I didn't know how else to respond to the tension I felt in the house. p.75
The writing in this novel is lyrical and somehow transports you back in time to 1975....to a place that you really don't want to leave when you've read the last page. Goetsch is a new author to me that I feel has so much promise. To me this book has mass appeal that goes beyond the YA target audience. I totally recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of southern fiction and just wants to read a good story.
As we followed the recipes her mother had followed and her mother before that, we talked in an abstract way. As the afternoon wore on
and Mother kept talking, I was listening to preserve the stories in mind. p.176
Other reviews of Back Creek:
Carrie at Books and Movies**I would like to personally thank Harrison Demchick from
Bancroft Press for contacting me to read and review this great story!!!
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Back Creek: A Novel