The Window to the World
A Review
Annie Duncan and her family must carry on without Pa. Pa leaves the family behind to go to California in search of gold. With no word from Pa, they wonder, did he really make the trip; is he dead or alive?
This twelve-year-old girl has lots of things to worry about. While out on a walk she meets an old man with her family cow, Blossom. He had “borrowed” the cow so that his guests could have milk. With the problem of run-away slaves in the area Annie thinks it is possible the old man needed the cow for his “guests”; could they be run-away slaves?
Author, Eunice Boeve, puts the reader right in the middle of the life of this young girl, her two brothers and her Ma and all the problems they face. With Pa gone and no word from him Ma meets a very well spoken gentleman. Annie does not like this man and she is afraid that Ma will marry him and if this happens she knows he will move the family away from their remote West Virginia farm.
The story weaves around the family and this reader had a hard time putting the book down. Annie is a very intelligent twelve-year-old, she still wonders about her Pa and hope to hear from him someday.
This is a book that really touched my heart. The Author, Eunice Boeve, put a great deal of love in this book as she does in all her books.
Dorothy
Yukon, Oklahoma
Excerpt:
The moon came out of the gathering clouds and shown down on the prone body of the red wolf. In death the fierce jaws had released the old speckled hen, but it too was dead. Aroused from sleep by Spinner barking, we had tumbled out of bed, Patrick grabbing the gun as he went out the door. He shot the animal as it came out of the chicken house, the hen limp in its mouth.
As Patrick knelt to examine the carcass, he noted aloud that the wolf had pups she hadn't yet weaned and that one of her back legs had been broken. "I'm afraid the old girl was desperate," he said. "Crippled like she was, she must of had a tough time catching anything to eat. I expect that's why she risked coming here."
Ma frowned. "She looks to be just skin stretched over bone."
"I know." Patrick sighed. "I bet her mate is dead, too. In a way I wish my shot would have missed her."
"Except she'd have been back," Ma said. "I'm not over fond of feeding all our hens to a wolf family." She lifted her gaze to the dark, jagged outline of the mountains, muttered something, and went back to the house.
I had trouble sleeping the rest of the night. I kept imagining the baby wolves huddled in their den, whimpering for their mother. They must have been on Patrick's mind,too, for the next day, when it started raining early in the morning, making the fields too muddy to work, he took Spinner and his gun and headed up into the hills.
The rain stopped by midmorning and the sun came out hot and bright. By noontime or soon after, we expected to see Patrcik come down out of the hills, Spinner at his side. But by chore time, he still wasn't home.
"Well, let's get the milking done," Ma said. "I can't imagine what's keeping him."
We milked all the cows but Blossom. We had let her go dry as she was due to have a new calf later this spring. Ma split up enough wood to fill the wood box and I fed the chickens and the hogs.
At bedtime, Ma took Jackson up into the loft and put him to bed. Afterwards she started a small fire in the stove. "I'll heat some water for tea," she said.
It had been hot and steamy after the rain, but with sundown a north wind had risen, chilling the air. The tea, though warm and soothing, did not take away the cold fear that was growing in me, the fear that something had happened to Patrick.
We sat side by side, Ma in her big rocker, her feet on the little stool Pa had made for her one Christmas. I sat in Pa's chair, my feet curled up under me. We said little to each other,our ears tuned to catch any sound that would mean Patrick was home. But only the wind in the trees and the occasional call of an owl disturbed the silence of the night.
I wished Pa could be here, if only for just this little while. He would have gone hours ago to look for Patrick, "reading sign" as he'd have called the hunt for whatever faint trail Patrick and Spinner had left behind. Pa's keen eyes saw what most of us could not. To partial footprints, to bent grass and broken twigs, he read the woods as easily as Patrick read words in a book. I was dwelling on those thoughts, my mind's eye seeing Pa moving silently through the trees with careful steps, open ears, and searching eyes, when Ma said, "Maybe I was a fool for letting your pa go off to California without us."
Startled, I uncurled my feet and dropped them to the floor. "What?" I said.
