This Child's Gonna Live (Contemporary Classics by Women)
Mariah and Jacob battle against grim and desperate poverty. One baby dies after her naval is bound with an unsterile bandage; later another dies from pneumonia, worms, and poison. Neighbors attack and gossip, hurling words in their own hopeless frustration at trying to make a living out of the used-up land and oyster beds of Tangierneck, Maryland: "wonder was that it hadn't all been washed away, the way that big, wide, bossy, ocean-going Nighaskin River keeps pouring water down into the mouth of the Neck until Deep Gut swallows all it can hold and backs the rest of it out for the ocean." It is a bleak and awful world, and Sarah Wright's language swirls up out of it, making the water, trees and buzzards seem sentient and symbolic. There is little hope and much determination, little forgiveness and far too many things to forgive in this place. The Paddy Rollers come around and lynch black men, the nearest school is still far away, and nothing seems to cure Mariah's children of their constant illnesses. Yet Mariah keeps on, dead set on getting her children out of the Neck, on finding a way out of a place without hope. Sarah Wright describes a horrible reality in stunning, beautiful, almost surreal language, creating a powerful novel that burns in your mind like the hallucinations of a fever.-- For great reviews of books for girls, check outLet's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. --From500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.