This Rock by Robert Morgan

From the author's website: “…a gripping story of two brothers struggling against each other and the confines of their 1920s Appalachian Mountain world.”

This was an audio book that I listened to. The setting was upstate South Carolina. Upstate is more of a mountainy area than my Lowcountry but to hear the South Carolina drawl replaced with a mountain twang was jarring. The narration sounded so deliberately hillbilly that it grated on my nerves. But I was able to get past it and enjoy the story - as much as you can enjoy any story by an Oprah author. Robert Morgan's selection that was picked by Oprah was Gap Creek, which I haven't read, but I'm sure it is equally depressing - they all are.

This book captured me right off the bat because the main characters were brothers - the good brother and the bad brother. That conflict is playing out daily here in Whoville with Youngest and Tween so I listened almost desperately waiting for some prophesy of what the future holds. It wasn't what I hoped to hear. The bad brother's antics just get worse and worse and are forgiven again and again by his mother because despite his terrible temperament he is her child and she loves him. She also quotes scripture about forgiving seven times seventy times to justify her actions. And thus the good brother is driven away to find peace on his own. I've felt that happening in a smaller way here. Tween drives everyone to misery and we all end up retreating to our personal space just to avoid conflict. But he's my baby and I still love him. I need to find the balance of protecting my family and providing Tween the reassurance he still needs that he is loved.

There's some redemption at the end in This Rock - hopefully the redemption here will come a little sooner precipitated by less drama - please God not enough to write a book!

This is one of the books on my list for the Spring Reading Thing 2009. Click on the logo to see the rest of my list.






This is one of my books for the 2009 Audio book Challenge. 9/12 completed on that one - click on the button to see how it's going!