A review by serendipitysbooks
Raft of Stars by Andrew J. Graff

adventurous emotional reflective tense
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

4.0

 
Raft of Stars is a wilderness adventure story that still managed to be a very character driven novel.

Fish and Bread are ten year old boys and close friends. Bread suffers abuse at the hands of his father and Fish ends up shooting the man. The two boys flee into the Wisconsin woods. Two search parties set out in pursuit; Fish’s grandfather and the town sheriff on horseback, his mother and a young townswoman in a canoe. Many bad decisions are made by all three groups and the weather, forest and river throw up challenge after challenge. All six are in some ways fleeing things from their past - grief, abuse, regret - and (spoilers ahead) eventually they find each other and themselves. The ending was very predictable, although the path to it was filled with plenty of conflict (with the environment, themselves, each other) and tension so held my interest.

I’ve read criticisms of this story - “ten and eleven year old boys don’t talk or think like that”, “no sheriff would act that way” - and if you read the novel as realistic fiction such criticism is valid. For me the book worked better when I read it as a modern day allegory; the characters designed as archetypes more than realistic people.

My one main hesitation with this story was its Christian overtones. That’s something I prefer to avoid in my reading and the way a couple of the characters were portrayed practising their faith was a little too heavy-handed for my taste. 
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