Wish You Well
by David Baldacci
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Book Summary Information
Author: David BaldacciEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-04-03
ISBN: 0446699489
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Book Reviews of Wish You Well
Book Review: Wishing well..
Summary: 5 Stars
Wish You Well
Our story starts out with a family, mother, father, daughter and son. They are going for the day to have a picnic before they move to California so father can pursue his writing career there. Currently they live in New York City. On the way back, mother and father are discussing moving and mother wants to go live in Virginia where father grew up -- Father doesn't want to ever go back. They end up having an accident, which kills father and hurts the mother. The children end up going to Viriginia, taking their mother whom keeps her eyes shut and doesn't speak anymore; thinking if they wouldn't have been argueing maybe the accident wouldn't have happened.
Moving to Virginia Oz and Lou meet lots of characters, the great-grandmother Louisa, Eugene, Diamond, Cotton and some not so nice. A big gas company pressures Louisa to sell her property, but she says she will never leave the mountain. She has a stroke and it leaves her stuck in the hospital, unable to communicate, just like mother. The gas company takes her to court, even though she is unable to communicate saying that she is mentally unfit and can't take care of the children either. Will she be able to save her land? Will mother (Amanda) ever walk and talk again?
This book was so enthralling I couldn't put it down. Lou is a strong young lady and one of my favorite characters. You will love this book!
Summary of Wish You Well
Precocious 12-year-old Louisa Mae Cardinal lives inthe hectic New York City of 1940 with her family.
Then tragedy strikes--and Lou and her younger brother,
Oz, must go with their invalid mother to live on their
great-grandmother's farm in the Virginia mountains.
Suddenly Lou finds herself coming of age in a new
landscape, making her first true friend, and experiencing
adventures tragic, comic, and audacious. But the forces
of greed and justice are about to clash over her new
home . . . and as their struggle is played out in a crowded
Virginia courtroom, it will determine the future of two
children, an entire town, and the mountains they love.
David Baldacci has made a name for himself crafting big, burly legal thrillers with larger-than-life plots. However, Wish You Well, set in his native Virginia, is a tale of hope and wonder and "something of a miracle" just itching to happen. This shift from contentious urbanites to homespun hill families may come as a surprise to some of Baldacci's fans--but they can rest assured: the author's sense of pacing and exuberant prose have made the leap as well.
The year is 1940. After a car accident kills 12-year-old Lou's and 7-year-old Oz's father and leaves their mother Amanda in a catatonic trance, the children find themselves sent from New York City to their great-grandmother Louisa's farm in Virginia. Louisa's hardscrabble existence comes as a profound shock to precocious Lou and her shy brother. Still struggling to absorb their abandonment, they enter gamely into a life that tests them at every turn--and offers unimaginable rewards. For Lou, who dreams of following in her father's literary footsteps, the misty, craggy Appalachians and the equally rugged individuals who make the mountains their home quickly become invested with an almost mythic significance:
They took metal cups from nails on the wall and dipped them in the water, and then sat outside and drank. Louisa picked up the green leaves of a mountain spurge growing next to the springhouse, which revealed beautiful purple blossoms completely hidden underneath. "One of God's little secrets," she explained. Lou sat there, cup cradled between her dimpled knees, watching and listening to her great-grandmother in the pleasant shade...Baldacci switches deftly between lovingly detailed character description (an area in which his debt to Laura Ingalls Wilder and Harper Lee seems evident) and patient development of the novel's central plot. If that plot is a trifle transparent--no one will be surprised by Amanda's miraculous recovery or by the children's eventual battle with the nefarious forces of industry in an attempt to save their great-grandmother's farm--neither reader nor character is the worse for it. After all, nostalgia is about remembering things one already knows. --Kelly Flynn
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