“The RoseBouquet”

In a round about way this book has come into my hands to review. It gives me some mixed feelings.

The basic plot premise is good and appeals to me, but it isn’t handled quite like I might have written it. Obviously, no two minds think alike, nor do we express ourselves in the same way. So aside from mulling through my own reactions, I want to look at this book the way I think readers generally would.

That brings me up short because it’s been quite a while since I’ve discussed books in depth with other readers. What if I don’t know how others think or read books now? Since I don’t belong to a discussion group I’ll have to be like a witness in court and just report what I know for a fact myself.

In, The Summer of Fireweed, Kathie, a young woman, arrives in the Yukon to teach in a small school provided by the government for the children of their Renewable Resources Management people in the small community called Minto Creek. She has just five students, but when one leaves a young native boy is allowed to come in and no one evicts him.

Katie comes from California where her mother was trying to marry her off to the pastor’s son, and although they were friends, Katie didn’t feel this marriage was what she wanted. She took this opportunity to go teach up in the Yukon with a Baptist mission, and found that it changed her life. She made new friends.

After Katie went back to California she found she wanted to return in fall for another year, and then again the next summer when the natives went to their fishing camps. The children of course, gathered around her, and she found herself conducting something like a vacation Bible School for the native children.

I found some of the characters were not developed enough. They seemed to be having a great impact on Katie out of the blue, so to speak, and I wondered when that relationship had developed because I hadn’t seen it creeping up.

This is a Christian book. However, in the years I spent writing my first novel I grew bolder and bolder with my Christian references throughout my book. I suspect that has conditioned me to expect more of it in the books I read. So I am trying not to judge Yoka Rusch, but I think I would have woven in a stronger Christian mind-set for Katie. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be part of her nature, but I thought the potential was there.

At the end, the book suddenly jumps ahead several decades to when Katie has been married for some time and raised a family, and she goes back to visit Minto Creek again. It made me feel as if some chapters were missing. Perhaps the intention was to focus just on the powerful effect of the Yukon, and not Katie’s years away from there, but since I - and most readers - get attached to our heroines, I would happily like to know more of her life. Still, I concede that the summary was well done.

The descriptions in the book focus most often on the views in the Yukon, which is good, but I would have appreciated more character development. There is some romance, but the narrative doesn’t tie the incidents together as well I would expect in other books. So they almost seem to be inserted here and there.

I would really like to see what someone else thinks who reads a lot of fiction.

Now, when I want to find a Christian book, I usually do a search at ChristianBook, for it has the best deals on the lines it carries.

Search: Title Author/Artist ISBN CBD Stock # Keywords Publisher

In this case, Summer of Fireweed, by Yoka Rusch is not available there, so then I recommend you go to her publishing house, AuthorHouse.com and do a search there.

If you are a frugal shopper like me, you may want to do some comparison shopping at Amazon, just in case a used copy is available there.

If you do read this book, I’d love to hear your impressions of it. I’ll be happy to pass them on to the author too. She really wants to know!