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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
A really great read - engaging, moving with fascinating historical detail. I would highly recommend.
I was expecting it to be more of a story about the Underground Railroad. I felt it was just a small part of the book and that was a disappointment.
hopeful
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Passages that struck me:
“You sit in silence, don’t you? No hymns, no prayers, no preacher to make you think. Why’s that?”
“We are listening.”
“For what?”
“For God.”
“Can’t you hear God in a sermon or a hymn?”
Honor was reminded of standing outside St. Mary’s church in Bridgport, just across the street from the Meeting House. The congregation had been singing, and she had been briefly envious of the sound.
“It is less distracting in the silence,” she said. “Sustained silence allows one truly to listen to what is deep inside. We call it waiting in expectation.”
“When the mind is clear, one turns inward and sinks into a deep stillness. There is peace there, and a strong sense of being held by what we call the Inner Spirit, or the Inner Light.” She paused. “I have not yet felt that in America.”
“Honor Bright, you are one delicate flower. You think just ‘cause Quakers say everyone is equal in God’s eyes, that means they’ll be equal in each other’s?”
As a child she had been taught that everyone has a measure of the Light in them, and though the amount can vary, all must try to live up to their measure.
It always took some time for a Meeting to grow still and quiet, like a room where dust has been stirred up and must settle. People shifted in their seats to find comfortable positions, rustled and coughed, their physical restlessness reflecting their minds, still active with daily concerns. One by one, though, they set aside thoughts about business, or crops, or meals, or grievances, to focus on the Inner Light they knew to be the manifestation of God within. Though a Meeting started out quiet, the quality of the silence gradually changed so that there came a moment when the air itself seemed to gather and thicken. Though there was no outer sign of it, it became clear that collectively the Meeting was beginning to concentration on something much deeper and more powerful. It was then that Honor sank down inside herself. When she found the place she sought, she could remain there for a long time, and see it too in the open faces of surrounding Friends.
Taking a deep breath, she sought inside herself to find steadiness. Everyone has a piece of God in them, she reminded herself, even a man hiding in the yard.
More than these clues, though, Honor began to be able to sense when a presence hovered on the outskirts of the farm. It was as if she carried an inner barometer that measured the change in the surrounding are, as one senses the air swelling before a thunderstorm. The shift was so clear that she marveled none of the others seemed to notices. To her, people’s beings gave off a kind of cold heat. Perhaps that was what Friends meant by an Inner Light.
..now for the first time in America she really was completely alone, forced to confront the vast indifference of the natural world around her and the stars and moon overhead. This feeling grew so strong that at last it overwhelmed her, the hard cruelty of the world pressing into her like cold metal she could taste in her mouth. Honor had to stop in the road, gulping again and again as if she were drowning. She tried to escape it by turning inward as she did at Meeting to find the warming Inner Light, but she could not shed her overriding desire: that Donovan would come to save her from that metallic taste.
“How does thee do this every night? And all alone?” Honor shivered, thinking of the cold metallic pressure of the night.
“You get used to it. Better to be alone. This” –the woman waved her hand at the woods around them—“this is safety. Nature ain’t out to enslave me. Might kill me, with the cold or illness or bears, but that ain’t likely. No, it’s that” –she pointed toward the road—“that’s’ the danger. People’s the danger.”
Before Comfort’s arrival, she had always been suspicious of them: the rocking seemed to her an aggressive sign of leisureliness. The constant rhythm set by someone else bothered her when she was sitting near an occupied rocker. Americans demonstrated their own rhythm in a much more public way than the English, and it did not seem to occur to them that others might not care for it. Indeed, Americans often went their own way with little consideration for how others felt: proud of their individuality, they liked to flaunt it.
When Honor visited other Faithwell families, she had always chosen a straight-backed chair, saying it was better for the sewing she brought with her. Really, though, she did not want to rock in front of others and impose her internal rhythm on them.
Perhaps, Honor thought one day, it is not that Americans are so wedded to individual expression, but that we British are too judgmental.
“I think deep down, most southerners have always known slavery ain’t right, but they built up layers of ideas to justify what they were doin’. Those layers just solidified over the years. Hard to break out of that thinking, to find the guts to say, ‘This is wrong.’ I had to come to Ohio before I could do that. You can, in Ohio—it’s that sort of place. I’m kinda fond of it now.” She patted the felt hat as if she were patting the whole state. “But Donovan…he’s too hard to shift.
Look for the measure of Light in her, she counseled herself, for it is there, as it is in every person. Never forget that.
Honor was not yet asleep when she felt a tiny presence next to the bed. In the glow from downstairs she could just make out the girl’s outline. Without saying anything the girl climbed into bed, careful around the baby, and slid under the quilt to press up against Honor’s back, like a little animal looking for warmth. She coughed a bit and then fell asleep.
Honor lay very still, listening to the girl’s snuffling breath and her daughter’s almost imperceptible sigh, marveling that a black girl was snuggling up to her, as Grace had done when they were girls and it was cold. The barrier between them was dissolving in the warm bed; here there was no separate bench. Whatever the uncertainty downstairs, outside, in the world at large, in this bed with the children close by and reliant on her, Honor felt calm, and part of a family. With that clarity she too was able to sleep.
She sat down on one of the straight chairs in the middle of the quiet kitchen and closed her eyes. Since staying with Belle she had not often had the opportunity to sit in silence. It was always harder to do so without the strength and focus of a community. Collective silence contained a purposeful anticipation. Now, alone, her silence felt empty, as if she were not searching hard enough or in the right place.
She sat for long time, taken out of the sinking feeling she sought by the interruption of sounds she would not normally notice: the crumbling of embers in the stove; the tapping of wood drying somewhere in the house; the clopping of a horse and turning of wagon wheels in the street in front of the shop.
“You sit in silence, don’t you? No hymns, no prayers, no preacher to make you think. Why’s that?”
“We are listening.”
“For what?”
“For God.”
“Can’t you hear God in a sermon or a hymn?”
Honor was reminded of standing outside St. Mary’s church in Bridgport, just across the street from the Meeting House. The congregation had been singing, and she had been briefly envious of the sound.
“It is less distracting in the silence,” she said. “Sustained silence allows one truly to listen to what is deep inside. We call it waiting in expectation.”
“When the mind is clear, one turns inward and sinks into a deep stillness. There is peace there, and a strong sense of being held by what we call the Inner Spirit, or the Inner Light.” She paused. “I have not yet felt that in America.”
“Honor Bright, you are one delicate flower. You think just ‘cause Quakers say everyone is equal in God’s eyes, that means they’ll be equal in each other’s?”
As a child she had been taught that everyone has a measure of the Light in them, and though the amount can vary, all must try to live up to their measure.
It always took some time for a Meeting to grow still and quiet, like a room where dust has been stirred up and must settle. People shifted in their seats to find comfortable positions, rustled and coughed, their physical restlessness reflecting their minds, still active with daily concerns. One by one, though, they set aside thoughts about business, or crops, or meals, or grievances, to focus on the Inner Light they knew to be the manifestation of God within. Though a Meeting started out quiet, the quality of the silence gradually changed so that there came a moment when the air itself seemed to gather and thicken. Though there was no outer sign of it, it became clear that collectively the Meeting was beginning to concentration on something much deeper and more powerful. It was then that Honor sank down inside herself. When she found the place she sought, she could remain there for a long time, and see it too in the open faces of surrounding Friends.
Taking a deep breath, she sought inside herself to find steadiness. Everyone has a piece of God in them, she reminded herself, even a man hiding in the yard.
More than these clues, though, Honor began to be able to sense when a presence hovered on the outskirts of the farm. It was as if she carried an inner barometer that measured the change in the surrounding are, as one senses the air swelling before a thunderstorm. The shift was so clear that she marveled none of the others seemed to notices. To her, people’s beings gave off a kind of cold heat. Perhaps that was what Friends meant by an Inner Light.
..now for the first time in America she really was completely alone, forced to confront the vast indifference of the natural world around her and the stars and moon overhead. This feeling grew so strong that at last it overwhelmed her, the hard cruelty of the world pressing into her like cold metal she could taste in her mouth. Honor had to stop in the road, gulping again and again as if she were drowning. She tried to escape it by turning inward as she did at Meeting to find the warming Inner Light, but she could not shed her overriding desire: that Donovan would come to save her from that metallic taste.
“How does thee do this every night? And all alone?” Honor shivered, thinking of the cold metallic pressure of the night.
“You get used to it. Better to be alone. This” –the woman waved her hand at the woods around them—“this is safety. Nature ain’t out to enslave me. Might kill me, with the cold or illness or bears, but that ain’t likely. No, it’s that” –she pointed toward the road—“that’s’ the danger. People’s the danger.”
Before Comfort’s arrival, she had always been suspicious of them: the rocking seemed to her an aggressive sign of leisureliness. The constant rhythm set by someone else bothered her when she was sitting near an occupied rocker. Americans demonstrated their own rhythm in a much more public way than the English, and it did not seem to occur to them that others might not care for it. Indeed, Americans often went their own way with little consideration for how others felt: proud of their individuality, they liked to flaunt it.
When Honor visited other Faithwell families, she had always chosen a straight-backed chair, saying it was better for the sewing she brought with her. Really, though, she did not want to rock in front of others and impose her internal rhythm on them.
Perhaps, Honor thought one day, it is not that Americans are so wedded to individual expression, but that we British are too judgmental.
“I think deep down, most southerners have always known slavery ain’t right, but they built up layers of ideas to justify what they were doin’. Those layers just solidified over the years. Hard to break out of that thinking, to find the guts to say, ‘This is wrong.’ I had to come to Ohio before I could do that. You can, in Ohio—it’s that sort of place. I’m kinda fond of it now.” She patted the felt hat as if she were patting the whole state. “But Donovan…he’s too hard to shift.
Look for the measure of Light in her, she counseled herself, for it is there, as it is in every person. Never forget that.
Honor was not yet asleep when she felt a tiny presence next to the bed. In the glow from downstairs she could just make out the girl’s outline. Without saying anything the girl climbed into bed, careful around the baby, and slid under the quilt to press up against Honor’s back, like a little animal looking for warmth. She coughed a bit and then fell asleep.
Honor lay very still, listening to the girl’s snuffling breath and her daughter’s almost imperceptible sigh, marveling that a black girl was snuggling up to her, as Grace had done when they were girls and it was cold. The barrier between them was dissolving in the warm bed; here there was no separate bench. Whatever the uncertainty downstairs, outside, in the world at large, in this bed with the children close by and reliant on her, Honor felt calm, and part of a family. With that clarity she too was able to sleep.
She sat down on one of the straight chairs in the middle of the quiet kitchen and closed her eyes. Since staying with Belle she had not often had the opportunity to sit in silence. It was always harder to do so without the strength and focus of a community. Collective silence contained a purposeful anticipation. Now, alone, her silence felt empty, as if she were not searching hard enough or in the right place.
She sat for long time, taken out of the sinking feeling she sought by the interruption of sounds she would not normally notice: the crumbling of embers in the stove; the tapping of wood drying somewhere in the house; the clopping of a horse and turning of wagon wheels in the street in front of the shop.
adventurous
reflective
medium-paced
This is a powerful book about finding your place in an unfamiliar world, finding a voice, and learning how to be an advocate and an activist to an oppressed people in a manner that will actually help. The women in this book are varied, interesting, and complex. This is definitely one of Chevalier's better novels.
A fast read. Entertaining enough for me to gulp it down in two evenings. Nothing too deep or enriching here, but sometimes a well-written tale is enough.
Enjoyed as I do most of Chevalier's books. The historical aspects are entertaining and this was different than usual.
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes