After their mother's
death, fifteen-year-old Sam and her ten-year-old sister, Ollie, spend
the summer living with their father. Their father and mother have not
lived together for years, although they seem to love each other. The
mother lived with the daughters in Eugene, Oregon. Bear, the father,
lived in a meadow keeping bees outside of Terrebonne, Oregon.
Sam has spent
summers with Bear for years. Ollie chose to stay with her mother, so
this is her first summer in the meadow, and it's not easy. Ollie
hasn't spoken since her mother's death because she sees Shimmerings,
ghostly figures who follow her around. She knows other people won't
believe her, so she doesn't talk.
Coping with their
mother's death is difficult enough, but Sam and Ollie find the body
of a woman floating in the creek near their meadow. Bear has been
acting strange, and he has a jacket that could have belonged to the
murdered woman. Sam is terrified that Bear will be suspected of the
murder and her tenuous family will be split apart again.
Sam is an engaging
character. She tries hard to preserve her family. However, she is a
teenager and the decisions she makes are often not well planned and
lead to more problems then they solve. Ollie is a strange character.
If you like ghost stories, you'll find her Shimmerings fascinating,
but it adds an element of unreality to the story that it's difficult
to accept.
The family situation
with the split between the parents is unusual. Bear comes across as
an introverted character who is not well prepared to cope with two
daughters. The reasons for the split between the parents aren't
clear, but one suspects that Bear can't take the responsibilities of
working in a major city and being a committed father living in a
family unit.
The setting is
beautifully described from the flowers, trees, and bees of the meadow
to the colors of the Shimmerings. The plot, however, stretches
credibility. The secondary characters from the teenage boy who
befriends Sam to his mother, an angry shopkeeper, and his father, a
strange artist, are unusual and sometimes hard to accept as real.
Likewise, Sam's involvement in solving the mystery and Ollie's seeing
ghosts can be hard to believe.
I recommend the book
is you like murder mysteries, ghost stories, and unique family
arrangements.
I reviewed this book
for the Amazon Vine Program.
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