Posts Tagged ‘Allison’s Book Bag’
Coyote Winds by Helen Sedwick
Posted on: May 18, 2013
There are days when I tire of being a reviewer, but then along comes a book like Coyote Winds by Helen Sedwick that makes me feel excited about my role. Coyote Winds is a bittersweet story, full of sadness and hope. As a historical novel, it’s about Myles and his family who struggle against overwhelming odds to maintain a farm during the depression and the Dust Bowl. As a young adult novel, it’s about thirteen-year-old Andy who lives in our modern times but misses his Grandpa Myles and is determined to keep his grandfather’s memories alive.
It’s been a long time since I have read a book about the love between a boy and a wild animal. Books such as Rascal come to mind. Being about a teenage boy and a coyote he rescues from a dust storm, Coyote Winds is also such a book. Their relationship is not without angst. When Myles brings Ro home, his father warns him that a coyote can’t be trusted. Moreover, their neighbor threatens to kill Ro, because of how certain he is that Ro will destroy livestock. This prediction seems true one day when the family arrives home to find Ro chasing their hog. But then the family realizes Ro is trying to keep Spark Plug from escaping her pen. Over the years, the relationship between Myles and Ro is tested, in ways that will make you mad and happy and sad. Isn’t that how the best relationships are?
A Dust Bowl storm approaches Stratford, Texas in 1935. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If you look at the back pages of Coyote Winds, under the Suggestions for Further Reading, you’ll find references to books about coyotes and other multiple other topics. You see, Coyote Winds is also about the Dust Bowl, homesteading and life on the American Western Prairie, the Great Depression, and even Volga German settlers. Whew! That’s a mouthful. With all these elements squeezed into a novel of just over two-hundred pages, you might expect Coyote Winds to read like a dry textbook. In contrast, while reading it, I found myself thinking of other novels which cover the same time era such as A Lantern in her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich and Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. The first especially carries the same poignancy of a family facing changes and hardship but also in love with the land that they own and are trying to master. Some of the most heartbreaking scenes in Coyote Winds occur when one by one, even the most arrogant families are forced to admit that the land will forever be their master. Not that this means they give up and leave, for some do endure, but these pivotal moments still tore me up.
The last topic I’ll address is how Sedwick makes use of the literary “story within a story” device. Anyone who follows my reviews knows that this isn’t one of my favorite techniques. To be honest, until the second half of the Coyote Winds, I’d intended to fault Sedwick for it. Coyote Winds is inspired by her fond memories of her father. Thus, it probably felt more natural for her to write as a young person looking back than one firmly entrenched in our modern world. For a while then, I wish she had just written about the teen in the past. Especially given that the affection she feels for her father and his memories comes across so strong that Sedwick seems at times to have fallen into the trap of promoting the “good old days”. However, because the story of Myles is so compelling I kept reading and eventually decided that both stories were needed. Only through both stories can we realize how cruel but beautiful nature is. And only through both stories can we understand the message of believing in dreams, no matter what the pain and cost.
When a book can make me feel as many emotions as Coyote Winds, I feel safe in declaring it an excellent read. What a beautiful tribute Sedwick has written for her father and what a wonderful story she has given to the literary world. I hope she has future historical tales to share.
My rating? Bag it: Carry it with you. Make it a top priority to read.
How would you rate this book?
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How Does a Writer Make an Historical Setting Come Alive? Guest Post by Helen Sedwick
Posted on: May 17, 2013
How does a writer make an historical setting come alive? Good question, and one every writer faces no matter where her book is set. The answer is details–telling, precise details. And for many writers the problem isn’t having too few details, it is having too many.
Like most writers of historical fiction, I read a great deal about the time period of my novel. (I list some on my website.) I researched coyotes, rattlesnakes, rifles, prairie dogs, homesteading, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and the Volga Germans settlers. I looked at old Vogue and Harpers magazines to see what young women were reading. I listened to vintage radio serials like Little Orphan Annie. I watched videos of swing dancing. I also had my father’s memoir of growing up on the prairie in the 1930s. Whenever my writing got stuck, I researched and came up with new ideas.
Well, after all that research I had too much information. In fact, I risked bogging the novel down if I loaded it with too many. How does a writer decide what details to leave in and which are better left off the page?
An inexact science at best, but here are some tools.
Use the filter of the point of view character. What details would the character notice when he walks into a room? The light from the window, the rifle over the fireplace, or the dust bunnies along the floor. How does it physically feel to be that character. Are his feet stuffed into outgrown boots or is he climbing a tree barefoot? Does his home smell of baking bread or horse manure? Is he hungry, cold, dirty? What are his wishes and fears? What is his typical day?
What details would someone else notice about the character? My main character, Myles, tells corny jokes and puns, a detail which reveals how he likes to please others. His neighbor, on the other hand, boasts about killing coyotes and putting their pelts on his fences. Another telling detail.
What details are important to the plot? As Chekhov said, if you introduce a gun in the first act it had better go off by the third. In COYOTE WINDS, a neighbor boy shows Myles how to taunt a rattlesnake into striking until it is too tired to fight. This is important information towards the end of the novel.
Pacing also determines what details to add. In a suspenseful scene, add details to drag out the moment. That is how the mind works. In moments on stress, we often become very aware of our surroundings.
A writer should also slip in details which are just too wonderful to leave out. For instance, I describe a blind man’s bluff game played by the Volga immigrant children, including the German rhyme. I described the frogs which disappeared during the years of drought, only to appear again when the rains returned. When Myles is caught in a tornado, I describe how the suction torn off his shoes. To capture the carnival-like atmosphere before a rabbit drive, I describe how “neighbors chatted with one another, catching up on marriages, babies, and deaths. A man from Burlington offered homemade ale in Mason jars. Boys tossed ax handles in the air like batons.”
Some of the most interesting details came from my father’s memoir. He told how they buried old farm plows and tied the corner of the shack to the plows to keep the shack from blowing away in the prairie wind, how they made ice cream using summer hail, and how in the last minutes before a dust storm hits, the wind dies down. The blowing dust blocks the wind like a sail. I posted my father’s memoir on my blog.
These details are gifts, precious personal gifts, which I pass on to my readers.
CONTACT INFO:
Website: http://www.helensedwick.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/helensedwickauthor
I have posted my father’s memoir on my blog. www.helensedwick.blogspot.com
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