Customer Reviews

Wish You Well (Paragon Softcover Large Print Books)

5 star:		(166)
4 star:		(52)
3 star:		(25)
2 star:		(24)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

Having read a number of David Baldacci's books, most of which are well written, engrossing thrillers, this one is quite different. It is not a thriller but, rather, a beautifully written, human drama, most of which takes place in the mountains of Virginia. In this unabridged, audiobook edition, the richness of the drama and the beauty of the writing is brought to life by the wonderful narration of Norma Lana, who manages to convey the down home sense of feeling that is palpable in the book.

This is a coming of age story. It is the story of the Cardinal family, as seen throught the young eyes of twelve year old Louisa Mae Cardinal, known as Lou, a precocious twelve year old, whose father is a highly acclaimed writer of note with great literary distinction but little commercial success. She lives with her beloved father, her mother, and her younger brother, Oz, in New York City. The year is 1940. The family is on the brink of moving to California, when tragedy strikes, and the lives of Lou, Oz, and their mother are forever changed.

Lou, Oz, and their now catatonic mother go to live with their paternal great-grandmother, Louisa, for whom Lou is named. This no nonsense, strong willed, loving matriarch lives high up in the the Appalachian mountains of Virginia, where Lou's father grew up, and that is where Lou and Oz will now grow up. They are strangers in a strange land, big city children now living on a farm without electricity, running water, or central heat. It is there that Lou comes of age and, together with her brother, Oz, has many new experiences. They are experiences that provide rights of passage and life lessons in friendship, loyalty, loss, and redemption. She gets a large dose of the good, the bad, and the ugly in life.

While there, big business threatens their way of life and pits the townsfolk against each other in a struggle for survival. It is a struggle that sees Louisa take a stance that will, ultimately, be the death of her, leaving the children to cope with their mother, who is physically sound, but locked in her own mind since the tragedy that changed their lives forever. The interests of big business and those of the Cardinal family clash in a Virginia courtroom in a riveting drama that is not easily forgotten. With the help of a family friend, a humble and kindly, country lawyer, things are, eventually, put to rights.

This well written book has richly drawn characters and a sensitive and descriptive narrative that transports the reader to another time and place. It is so evocative of the hardscrabble, mountain existence, so as to make the readers feel as if they, themselves, were experiencing it. It is a sentimental journey that is calculated to tug at one's heartstrings. It is a journey, however, well worth taking. With this book, the author has set himself apart from the pack and proclaimed himself a true literary talent.

When I picked up David Baldacci's "Wish you Well" I didn't know what to expect. I had read "The Winner", "Total Control" and "Saving Faith" so I think I was expecting something more along those lines. Instead, what I got was a touching book about hope and love. The kind of love that a child has for a parent. Pure love. The description of the mountains of Virginia where the story takes place was so real, that I could literally visualize it. At various points in the story I wanted to reach out and give Lou and Oz hugs...something I felt they were so desperately needing.

The outcome of the book was what I expected to a degree. The story does not disappoint and is now one of my favorite books of the year!

Well done Mr. Baldacci. You have impressed me again.

I'm reading what I think is a really wonderful book now. Its called Wishing You Well by David Baldacci. He normally writes thrillers like Absolute Power, however, this time he steps out of his genre to write a really beautiful character novel. If you've read his other stuff as I have, it will take you 50 - 75 pages to realize that this is a special book. It's one of the best books I've read in a long time. I like character novels now so take my praise in that light. It's a wonderful read. The characters touch something way down inside of me. Maybe because I spent some time in Appalachia growing up and knew a lot of transplanted coal miners that this story is special, but I think it has a lot to say to everyone.

In 1940s New York City, twelve-year-old Louisa Mae "Lou" Cardinal hero-worships her father, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. Lou's dream is to become as highly regarded as he is, but she is unaware of how little money her dad Jack earns. Considered by critics one of the best authors of his generation, Jack is considering Hollywood in order to feed his family of four.

Lou's idyllic world crashes when her beloved father dies in a car accident. With her mother in shock, Lou and her younger brother Oz are displaced and move to their great-grandmother's remote Virginia farm. The two siblings begin to heal, but a new fight to save their new home is on the horizon.

WISH YOU WELL is a powerful character-driven historical novel that provides the audience a look at the bone marrow of emotions of the key players during tragedy. Readers will take to heart Lou, Oz, their mom, and their great-grandmother. The support cast augments the tale with even deeper glimpses of the Cardinals. Although David Baldacci overdoes the melodrama and reverts to a well-written courtroom climax, WISH YOU WELL is a great look at daily survival during a period of intense grief and displacement.

Harriet Klausner

"Sentimentality in the First Degree!" This accusation leveled by Gene Kelly's character at Spencer Tracy in the classic "Inherit the Wind" came to mind as I read this novel by David Baldacci, a departure for one of our preeminent authors of the legal-suspense genre. While it is at times a warm and touching read, based upon Baldacci's family background in rural Virginia, it also leaves much to be desired in that it shamelessly veers into sentimentality, cliched characters and plot developments. Set in 1940, toward the end of the great depression and the eve of World WarII, "WishYou Well" follows the fortunes of 12 year-old Louisa Mae Cardinal, and her 7 year-old brother, Oscar(Oz), children of New York City, who, due to an automobile accident that claims the life of their father, an author, and leaves their mother comatose, are sent to live with their paternal grandmother in the mountains of Virginia. It is a hard-scrabble existence our young heroine and hero must adjust to, among people who labor from before dawn to sunset, surviving by the sweat of their proverbial brows at arduous farm chores. However, under the guiding hand of their stern, strong-willed, but loving family matriarch, a humble but noble country lawyer, a loyal black farm hand, and a Huck Finn-esque playmate,our young protagonists fare just fine, while learning valuable life lessons, and successfully passing several of youths' traditional rites of passage. Young Louisa, an aspiring writer also grapples with, and eventually comes to terms with her ambivalent feelings toward her deceased father, and her mother, whose vegetative state Louisa perceives as a form of abandonment. The story culminates in a David and Goliath courtroom battle between our modest, but undaunted country counselor representing 'jes plain folk', and that old reliable nemesis of too many legal novels: Greedy Capitalist Interests. If all this sounds a bit pat and dela vu, there's a good reason - it is! Baldacci obviously intends to give his readers an acute case of the warm fuzzies, replete with eyes brimming with tears. To a degree he succeeds, but at the price of calculated sentimentality, cliched characters, and plot elements that are shamelessly borrowed from superior works, notably "To Kill a Mockingbird" "Fried Green Tomatoes", among others. Only those with hearts of granite can finish "Wish You Well" with dry eyes, but the reader may justifiably feel that he has had his emotional strings pulled, and all his feel-good buttons somewhat cynically pushed. Here's some free advice to the good counsel from Virginia, Baldacci: stick to the legal thrillers where you excel, and your characters are not so cliched and plot developments not so easily foreseeable.

I'm still not quite sure what to make of Baldacci's WISH YOU WELL. Despite the hype, this is not a literary novel, although it does sometimes come close, but rather is commercial mainstream fiction aimed to sell well and not to challenge our preconceptions of the world. As long as you view it as just that - a commercial novel - you will be satisfied with this book.

In 1940, Jack Cardinal dies in a car accident that leaves his wife Amanda in a coma and his two children, Lou (short for Louisa) and Oz (Oscar), without a caretaker. Lou acts on her parents' last conversation and suggests the surviving family members go to Virginia to live with great-grandmother, Louisa, whom none of them has met. So off the three go: Lou, Oz, and comatose Amanda. There, Lou and Oz discover a hard but rewarding existence in the mountains where coal and poverty rule. They come to love Eugene, also known as "Hell No", Diamond who is a resourceful but uneducated orphan, and, most of all, Louisa herself, who has many lessons to teach the children.

Although the plot is somewhat predictable and Baldacci populates his Virgina mountains with a supporting cast of types (the greedy coal company men, the abusive man who tends to his mare's foaling despite his wife's difficult - and simultaneous, of course - labor, the black man who gets respect only from the good guys), Baldacci goes further with his main characters. Pre-teen Lou is well imagined, even if she sometimes acts too old for her age. Louisa, Lou's great-grandmother, has the most commanding presence of all the characters, with her mountain hardness tempered by a generous heart; her past and present all feel real, true to life.

You'll enjoy this book as long as you don't expect high literature. Baldacci knows how to tell a story, and how to tell it well, leaving his readers with a firm sense of resolution. You won't find page-turning suspense here, as you will with his other bestselling books, but you will discover a new side to this author. As a literary novel (which some people claim it is), I would give it three stars; as a mainstream commercial one, I'd give it five.

A change of genre, and an exquisite glance into life in the Virginia mountain regions. The all-but orphaned children of a well-known, but unprosperous writer, find themselves in the care of their great grandmother. From the privileges and conveniences of the city, Louisa and young Oz must adapt to the hard work and beautifully brutal mountain life. Some marvelous characters and eye-opening stories. The simplicity of the lifestyle contrasted to the powers of industry determined to strip the area of resources, and leave the inhabitants with no means of survival. An interesting, enlightening story, with a rather improbable ending. Many scenes are reminiscent of Harper Lee, but Baldacci's brushstrokes paint a slightly different time and circumstance - and do it well.

In David Baldacci's new book which is of a different light to his other books, we are introduced to Lou and Oz Cardinal moving from a hectic New York life to the pretty Virginian countryside. This happens due to the death of their father in an automobile accident, and their mother illness's which is a result of that misfortune. They are placed in the supportive hands of their great grandmother Louisa Mae Cardinal where they are taught how to live off of the land, milk the cows, ride horses,feed the pigs and plant seed if they want to eat food the coming winter. The kids take this manual work in good stride, spurred on by the supportive love, courage and determination,of their great grandmother. Lou and Oz appear as the main characters in this book though their little friend Diamond breaks my heart many times over in this tale. Oz does too though in a different way, with his unstinting belief in his comatose mother awakening from her sleep, where she would be capable of loving him and his sister just as before. Not wanting to give too much away to those who have not read this book as yet, let me say that for me it has been a breath of fresh air from the Virginian mountains. I got to feel everything that those wonderful characters experienced, from the smell of the lovely mountain air, then the flowers, the food cooking, the earthly manure,even the dynamite....strong. David Baldacci definitely is on to a movie with this one. Readers, buy this book today.....you won't be sorry. Thanks Mr Baldacci for a great read.

The one thing that kept running through my mind over and over as this book unfolded was this: Are you sure this book was written by David Baldacci? I mean, this is the same author who wrote such highly charged political thrillers as ABSOLUTE POWER and THE SIMPLE TRUTH, and thrilling suspense novels like THE WINNER. To say the least, this book is almost a complete 180 degree turn away from that genre. Taking place mostly in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia, the book follows the lives of two young children, the precocious, hard-headed, 12 year old Lou (Louisa) and her younger, much more timid brother Oz (Oscar). After a tragic car accident kills their father and leaves their mother almost comatose, they go to live with their Great-Grandmother, Louisa Mae, on her mountain farm in Appalachia. While the book generally follows the lives of the two children as they struggle to adjust to the primitive conditions and hard work of life on a farm, the character of Louisa Mae remains the center of the story. Close to 90 years of age, she works to take care of the two young children suddenly thrust into her life while at the same time working non-stop on the mountain farm that has been her home for her entire life. We also meet a host of other characters, from the black farmhand who works constantly on the farm and is a lot smarter than anyone gives him credit for, to the irrepressible "Diamond", an orphaned boy without a care in the world who becomes best friend to Lou and Oz, to the small-town lawyer with a poet's soul who works hard to defend Louisa Mae's farm from the Mining Corporation that wants to take over and destroy it, and who also acts as a father figure to Lou and Oz. Of course some of the usual Baldacci elements are there: Suspense, tragedy, humor, and the struggle of the weak against the powerful, which climaxes in a dramatic courtroom scene. But those elements are secondary to the rich character development that takes place throughout the book. The book's only possible flaw is the somewhat predictable ending. The book is also followed by an Afterword by the author, in which he laments the continued downward spiral of our society in general, and the disintegration of the family in particular. In these days of increased violence in our homes and schools, this seems particularly poignant. All in all, this book was thoroughly enjoyable, and I highly recommend it. NOTE: I listened to the unabridged Book-on-Tape version, read by Norma Lana. Normally, listening to a book on tape is not as good as reading it for yourself, but in this case, with Ms. Lana's sweet southern lilt (I don't know if it's real or not) and mastery of dialects, I think the book comes to life in a way it never could. If you can find the Book on tape version, I think you will find it very enjoyable.

I am just in middle school so I don't get the privilige of reading a book so well written. My grandmother introduced this book to me because she thought I could relate to it becuase my father passed away three years ago. After reading the book I understand how she saw my being able to relate to it through being at a very young age and losing someone dear to me but when I closed the book for a final time I began to think, I relate to this book in so many other ways. I am not a big fan of reading and it is not often that I do, every once in a while I do come across a book that I like and I read it, never with great enthusiasim though. This book is the best book I have ever read, which is not to say much because I have read a total of 15 books cover to cover not including the baby books but this book inspired me. As I was reading I began to wonder what it would be like to live in the mountains in Virginia simply living on what I could find but then I realized that being the very needy high maintence person that I am that it would be best that I just imagine it instead of live it. Reading this book gave me a new prospective on my life. After closing this book for the last time I realized how many people are so much more worse off than me, but then they don't see it like that they see it as we have it worse off than them because those of us who do live in cities and have electricity most likely would not be able to survive in the mountains or any like area becuase we were not raised in the right mind set to do so. I mean none of this as be offensive to anyone. This just goes to show that though we are all human beings we still see things differently, never the wrong way, but most of us unlike Jack Cardinal only see but half of life's bueaty.