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Mary Coin (2013)

by Marisa Silver(Favorite Author)

3.88 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0399160701 (ISBN13: 9780399160707)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Blue Rider Press

review 1: Author Marisa Silver has taken Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" photograph and given us a story about the woman in the picture and the woman behind the camera. She changes their names but we know who they are. We go back and forth between Oklahoma and California (two states I am pretty familiar with), with a poignant description of life for a poor family in Oklahoma in the 1920s and a description of an even harder life once the family moves to California. The Depression hits, the Dust Bowl hits, people move west to at least find a job, and the life our migrant family endures trying to eke out an existence in the fruit and vegetable fields of California just smacks us in the face. And, along the way, a woman takes a picture. She has her story to tell too. This is the story... more of the two women, their families and their resiliency, but it is the story of America at that point in time that really touched me.
review 2: This was a book club selection, not one that I picked out for myself. I thought this book was OK. I'm not critiquing the author and her writing, I'm just expressing my opinion on my level of enjoyment or whether I took anything away from this book. I don't usually like this type of story. She covers different characters and different time periods and ties the events and characters together. Because of this format, I never really got to know the characters in depth. Throughout the book they just seemed like characters in a book. It's hard for me to feel any emotional connection when it's told in this way. Overall, I felt bored most of the time and was relived to be finished with it. If it had not been a book club selection, I would have given up on it. To be fair, I'll mention that quite a few people in the book club seemed to really like it! less

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