Book Review: Road to Covered Bridge

Okay, I'll say it - this writer is a better writer than me. I'm honoured to share a publisher with her. Her writing style is the kind that wins high-brow awards for literature.

This book reminded me very much of “To Kill a Mockingbird”, not just because it’s written from the point of view of a spirited child, but because of the lyrical, meandering prose which really was beautiful, evocative and authentic. The book leaves a lot of questions unanswered, and you get the feeling that the answers are just out of the reach of our narrator, but the characters are fully rounded and intriguing.

It’s masterfully written and feels very much like "real life" in that it's not nicely packaged with trite answers, clear endings, and sensible conversations - in fact, I loved the parts where the family were all talking at once, often about different subjects, and in a very disjointed way, because that is what family life with children is really like.

Although this isn’t an era or area which much interests me, if frontier history is your thing, you’ll probably love the detail and the images it conjures.