Customer Reviews

The Fence My Father Built

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Fence My Father Built by Linda S. Clare is a poignant novel about finding where you belong. Muri Pond is taking her two children, Nova and Tru, home to her father's home in the desert area of Oregon after the loss of her job and the end of her marriage. She grew up never knowing Joseph Pond, but after his death, she finds she has nowhere else to go, so going to his home makes sense. Until she finds out that his home is a trailer with a group of cobbled together additions and is occupied by her quirky aunt and uncle and their potbellied pigs. That's only the beginning of Muri's trouble, however. Joseph left a fight over water rights with the town's best-loved citizen in which Muri quickly finds herself trapped in as well, plus Nova has no intention of living in the middle of nowhere. Clare puts Muri in the middle of an impossible situation and every turn of the page only seems to turn up the heat. Her writing is powerful and deeply human. I hope she writes more fiction soon!

I realize this is a new author and I thought the story line had potential. The main character, Muri, was supposed to be an educated woman but if she had said she didn't understand the importance of water rights (in a desert) one more time I would have been the one screaming. The constant family bickering, remembrances of an alcoholic father and disfunctional relationship with her ex-husband just got old. A good edit may have made this a good novella. Just too drawn out and repetitive to be good. I almost didn't finish it.

I had never heard of this author before I read the book. Now I am looking forward to more from the same author. I received this book as a reward for filling out a survey from the publisher. My husband read it first. I noticed that he was reading whenever he had a spare moment. - Good sign. Then it was my turn.

I enjoyed the book because it has a good story along with a search for God that is very realistic. Muri did find God, along with finding more about her heritage.

I'm not going to rehash the plot since everyone else has done that to death. I'll also state up front that I downloaded the book only becausae it was free. And I'm not usually into Christian fiction.

Surprisingly, I liked it. It wasn't the best book I've read, but I liked it. It kept me engaged. The themes of loss, redemption, finding your way -- all have a universal appeal. I came to admire Muri and her newly-discovered relatives, and gained an appreciation of what it must take to survive in the "Oregon outback". It's a book about what's on the inside versus what's on the outside; what's important and what's not; where you're going versus where you came from. I think that this book would make a marvelous reading circle choice because it has so many discussion points.

Readers may be up half the night engrossed in Linda Clare's vivid novel. The story mixes several unique characters, an unavoidably absent, deeply loving, but flawed father and his adult daughter, Muri. She's uncertain about living with two unusual relatives. People in the area don't readily accept her or her two children, nor fully respect her late father.

Why does a small town allow an unsavory man to control everything? Can Muri unearth this villain's secret? She gambles by bluffing at a dangerous turning point. Will she win or lose? Why did her father build his strange fence? What messages did he leave her?

Linda Clare has crafted a story of mystery, of love and budding romance and of learning to understand family. The setting, Oregon's high desert, is beautifully described, as are snippets of ranching life. Readers will learn about important aspects of Native American culture.

A well-written and believable tale, but with maybe too easy a resolution for Muri? After she finds a new relationship with God, did He give her answers to defeating the villain, as her aunt believes? Readers can decide, while enjoying a good story.

© Geni J. White

There are a lot of stories out there to be told, and there are a lot of storytellers for that matter. There are some stories I like, some a lot. There are some stories I don't care for as much. And then, sometimes there is a story that reaches me on a deeper, more personal level. The Fence My Father Built is one of those stories.

There was a lot about this book that I was able to relate to. I grew up with an alcoholic father, who now has liver disease (I should note that he has been clean for several years and the liver disease is actually caused by Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam). Muri spent most of her life not knowing her dad or her Heavenly Father. After her dad dies, she returns to his home to find the special gift of her father's legacy.

The Fence My Father Built is written with such tenderness that touched me deeply. The fence built from old oven doors was the beacon that led Muri to find her home and to find what she had been missing all her life. I loved the journal entries that Joseph wrote to his daughter. The faith he shared with her despite his pain was so moving. It was as if he knew Muri would need to hear those words. This book has given me a new appreciation for my earthly father, who is very special to me, and to my Heavenly Father, who I have only come to know in the last few years.

Whether you can relate to this book the same way I did or not, it is still an excellent book with delightful characters and realistic family dynamics. The Native American history was very interesting as well. This book will appeal to many different types of readers because it has a little bit of everything. This is not a book to just be read though. It is a book to be absorbed and savored.

The book starts out interesting but about half way through loses it. Too repetitive. You know where this lady's at so no reason to keep repeating it...needed better editing. A few pages simply didn't make sense... your here in the morning and within a page your in the evening without any explanation? Too much on repeating her problems with kids, etc. Just couldn't keep me interested because of the repetition. I wanted to find out about the Indian burial ground and how they solved the problem but 3/4 of the way through she still wasn't there. Story could have been much shorter and made sense... guess they needed the repetition through out to make a book.

I am not a religious person so I was pleased to find that this in not a "religious" genre book. The characters are like me and people I have known all my life. The situations are true to the contemporary struggles of many of us. Here we find a well-educated professional urban educator whose circumstances have thrust her into the world of her low-income rural family. The "fence her father built" is a dividing line between integrity and duplicity, between roots and opportunism. There is a God here, but she stands way back--so far back that--well, that the mystery of God remains a mystery. A good read by a promising author.

Told through the eyes of Muri Pond, the reader makes a journey of the heart and travels with her children to the inherited property from her father, Joe Pond who left when she was three.

I found some of the themes of this well-done book in a few thoughts from Muri on page 130, "All my life I'd wanted nothing more than to know my father, to understand the where and what and how about myself and my family. Now I was finding out things I wasn't sure I wanted to know. The worst part was that my dad wasn't even around to ask questions of or get mad at or collapse upon in tears when the going got tough. I couldn't look him in the eye to see my own reflection, nor was he around anymore to ask advice about teenagers or legal matters. Joseph Pond was still a stranger to me. But I was no longer a stranger in Murkee."

Linda Clare weaves a skillful story with colorful characters thrown into difficult life situations. The combination draws the reader to see what happens and keep turning the pages until the end. It was a good read and I recommend it.

The Fence My Father Built is a heart-warming story from an excellent story-teller. I had the good luck to be able to read this book in one sitting while flying across the country. The Fence My Father Built presents characters I wanted to know and a plot so skillfully developed that it kept me eagerly turning pages with a cup of coffee forgotten, growing cold. I genuinely cared about Muri, the heroine, her son Truman, and her daughter Nova. Linda Clare absolutely caught both the struggles of a single mom and the needs and dreams of a teenage girl. I look forward to reading her next novel. I hope it's out soon.