Drinkwater by Eric Hopkins

From the Publisher

Drinkwater was originally an English word given to someone who abstains from drinking alcohol. As a family name it represents sobriety, dignity and self-control.
Nineteen-year-old Amber Drinkwater knows that when life presents hardships, a responsible person meets them fairly, with a clear head and the willingness to work. her plans to start a new life in Toronto with her brother Guy are interrupted when their uncle fails to meet them at the train station, but she resolves to abide until he turns up--and when it seems their caretaker is gone for good, she accepts it as an unexpected but timely call to independence and adult responsibility, in spite of her dearth of money or friends in the city.

The sprawling city of Toronto represents a shining opportunity for Amber to prove herself through an old code of grim endurance and bold resignation, but she will find her simple work ethic is no match for its modern towers, dark streets and disjointed neighbourhoods. Drinkwater is a provocative story that blurs the borders between teenage empowerment and helplessness, between experience and naivety, and between optimism and blind hope.

My Thoughts

Obtained through Mini Book Expo I picked this book because it was set in Toronto. I am a real home-grown girl.
Throughout the book the reason for Amber and Guy to be their own is just hinted at. Suddenly they are alone without parents and nobody is really that invested in helping and providing for them. Somehow they must muddle through the preparations for their life and live it without a safety net and nowhere is this more evident than when they arrive in Toronto and their uncle is supposed to be collecting them from Union Station but he never shows up.
They have no place to go and nobody to call in Toronto to help them. I think that Amber thought she could provide for the two of them but in reality a couple of teens on their own without a lot of money and their luggage in tow become lost like so much dross blowing around the city.
They are unable to even find basic accommodation for themselves and spend days eating nothing more than carbs at local donut and coffee places.
Amber also showed her age and inexperience by her pride. She had thought that she was old enough to care for them both but in reality a grown and experienced adult would be willing to admit when they didn't have any options and would use any and all resources to help themselves and their loved ones.
Well written...I could feel the despair!
I give this a 4 out of 5 stars.
I loved this book and was riveted throughout.

The Girl in the Backseat by Norma Charles

The Girl in the Backseat


In this fast-paced, on the road, YA novel, Norma Charles once again manages to include provocative social issues in an adventure story that will appeal to children from age ten and up.

The novel opens with Toby, a young girl in a Bountiful-style community, being caught secretly reading at night. The community leaders decide that she must be married at once to "the prophet," an older man. Hearing of the plan, Toby decides to escape to Winnipeg where she has a sympathetic aunt. Fortunately, at this moment she meets Jacob and Minerva Armstrong and learns they are on their way to Winnipeg in the family Mini. During the night, she steals away and hides herself in the backseat of the Mini.

Jacob and Minerva have their own set of problems, since they are black and their Caribbean mother has recently remarried, this time to a penny-pinching Englishman who has two children of his own, and who seems wholly alien to the siblings. When the two Armstrong children discover Toby hiding in the backseat, she pleads with them not to tell their parents, since they will surely call the police. As the trio make their way across the country to Winnipeg, all sorts of problems arise as Jacob and Minerva learn more about Toby’s plight and her life in the religious community.

My Thoughts

Claimed from Mini Book Expo. I always enjoy reading books that take place in Canada and this book is no exception. I haven't travelled through the western provinces though so I eagerly lapped up the descriptions of the route travelled by the family. I am reminded of the young adult genre of the book when the main story of polygamy and young girls being married off to old men is 'glossed' over. The subject is a distasteful one and aside from Toby's brief explanation of her frantic flight from her fate of being sent to Texas to marry a prophet of their faith...the details are hazy. She is running away to join an aunt of hers who had also escaped her life of drudgery and servitude and had run away to Winnipeg. What is less believable about this story though is how Toby has managed to keep her heretical thoughts and beliefs leading up to her escape.... to the age that she is now. I would assume that most young girls growing up in this environment would be thoroughly indoctrinated by the age of 14 and would willingly fall in line with the community's expectations. The book flows along well though and the characters are appealing and likable. 3 out of 5 stars

Stonecypher Road by Nancy and Warren Longwell

Stonecypher Road by Nancy and Warren Longwell

Book Description

Ida Jo Canfield, having come from childhood poverty, has now returned to her old hometown to care for a dying mother. When her husband, Morris, returns from a week of speed racing on the Bonneville Salt Flats, he tells of a mysterious artifact found half-buried in a remote corner of the vast salt desert a replica of a human skull carved in crystal. Using a computer access at the small local public library, he searches the Internet for possible clues to the origin and history of the relic, unaware that powerful government supercomputers are at work screening Web traffic to look for the same thing. Following their own instincts and ideas, Morris and Ida Jo undertake a quest to decode information ingeniously hidden within their crystal relic, even as they try to decide on its proper disposition. They have now set themselves on a journey that will take them to the great museums of Manhattan, and deep under New York City into abandoned tunnels where the mole people give them a taste of first contact with a hidden society. Nancy and Warren Longwell have drawn on their 30 years of global travel and high-adventure exploration to write a stunning and literate debut novel that always keeps the reader wondering how much of the story might be true.

About the Author

Nancy and Warren Longwell have spent their lifetime together searching for new ways to expand their limits. They have paddled their own canoe down Africa's crocodile-infested Zambezi River, and climbed towering ice walls in British Columbia and Alaska. In the course of three global circumnavigations, they sailed for months at a time on working freighter ships, and once crewed on an America's Cup yacht. Travel, they decided, would be their higher education, and they spent their semesters trekking to holy shrines at Machu Picchu and Rangoon and along China's Great at allWall. Warren has raced on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, and Nancy has run the New York Marathon, and together they have gone underwater through a subterranean river in Mexico's Yucatan. Off the coast of Vanuatu (long before Vanuatu became famous on reality television) they tried their hand at underwater archeology on the submerged hulk of a steel warship, then later recovered a museum-quality artifact! in the mountains of Papua New Guinea. They have "flown" in a shuttle simulator at NASA's Houston space facility, and crossed four continents by rail. All this has given them material for numerous published magazine articles, but it has taken until now for them to realize their dream of authoring a published novel. Stonecypher Road marks their stunning and literate debut.


My Thoughts

Claimed from Mini Book Expo

The book arrived and I looked at the cover and it was awful. Not appealing at all...garish colours with childlike graphics that gave you a false negative sense of the book...but then I started to read the book and settled in.
I have had so many good books to read and review lately that I have been expecting to eventually come across one that I would have to force myself to finish. This is NOT that book. This book was an easy and interesting read and proof of the old adage to 'not judge a book by it's cover'.
The husband and wife dynamic of Ida Jo and her mate Morris epitomise the happy grounded couple who enjoy each other's company. They are best friends and continue to learn new facets to each other's personality and past which keeps the mystery alive and makes their lives more interesting. They have fun together and the story flows because of that.
The book revolves around the finding of a carved crystal skull...apparently only the 13th found ever. Morris finds this skull in a chance out of the way incident as he races at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah and he sees it glinting in the sun. Completely intrigued by this find he starts to search online for information about it and he unwittingly triggers an online policing system that is activated when certain keywords and specific sites are visited. A secret section of the government is in charge of monitoring this system.
Ida Jo was not with Morris when he found the skull as she was caring for her dying mother in her hometown but he came to be with her during her mother's last days to comfort and provide solace to her.
Their adventures take them from Boulder Colorado to Nova Scotia Canada and back down to the underground tunnels of New York City to meet the mole people before they manage to rid themselves of this dangerous artifact but not before they learn it's secret.
The dialogue is witty and clever and their relationship seems genuine and not forced or fake which makes this book a pleasure to read.
3.5 stars out of 5

Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden

Obtained through Mini Book Expo

Format:Hardcover Published:September 9, 2008 Publisher:Penguin Group Canada From the Publisher From internationally acclaimed author Joseph Boyden comes an astonishingly powerful novel of contemporary aboriginal life, full of the dangers and harsh beauty of both forest and city. When beautiful Suzanne Bird disappears, her sister Annie, a loner and hunter, is compelled to search for her, leaving behind their uncle Will, a man haunted by loss. While Annie travels from Toronto to New York, from modelling studios to A-list parties,Will encounters dire troubles at home. Both eventually come to painful discoveries about the inescapable ties of family. Through Black Spruce is an utterly unforgettable consideration of how we discover who we really are. About the Author Joseph Boyden is a Canadian with Irish, Scottish, and Métis roots. Three Day Road has received the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year Award and has also been shortlisted for the Governor General Award for Fiction and published in 10 languages. He divides his time between Northern Ontario and Louisiana, where he teaches writing at the University of New Orleans.


The novel Through Black Spruce is written by alternating chapters between Annie Bird's story, a somewhat confused loner and niece to, Will Bird, bush pilot, who lies in a coma in a hospital bed.
Annie shares her story, while seated at her uncle's bedside, about the search for her sister in the international modelling world, in an effort to interest her uncle enough in the day to day troubles that he will awaken from his coma.
Will's voice comprises the alternate chapters about his recollections of events leading up to the beating that leads him to the coma. Both stories culminate in a shared climax that has it's roots in the same sequence of events.
I loved this book. I found the style of writing easy to read and it flowed. The characters were well developed and through the tale there was shown to be a growth period for both of the main protagonists. The sequence of events leading to the climax made sense and was well planned and executed and the overwhelming theme of family was well described.
I left this book after the closing of the last page feeling as if I had read an authentic tale relating problems experienced by a few aboriginals in their native northlands and how they are fighting the the same fight of drug related gangs and violence that we are further south. Their success in this fight also depends on the few who stand up against this oppression and fight back.
A timely tale.
5 out of 5 stars.