Customer Reviews

A Place Called Sweet Shrub (Lucinda Richards Trilogy)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It took me to another place in time and I enjoyed every second of it. I highly recommed this book.

I found & read this book first. Later I found the first in the series, Train to Estaline. They are both very good. I enjoyed reading about Lucy & her family & all their quirks. Enjoy.

Set in pre-WWI east Texas and Arkansas, this is a book that surprises. Look at the cover, and you suspect it might be a little syrupy. It certainly starts out that way. But the writing is intriguing and the characters begin to show a surprising depth. The emerging rights of women are delicately addressed together with the civil wrongs of the era. The characters surprise us from time to time, the goodness of Queenie, the shallowness of Edna and Bob, the gentleness and persistence of Josh. And Mama with her talking without moving her lips, is a high-spirited throw back to the prim and proper and occasionally clueless era. The reader is left hanging at the end, in particular the whereabouts of Jeremiah and Keats - we can only hope? In the meantime, I am headed for the library to find more by this author. This would make a wonderful audio book (with some of the music, too?).

"Sweet Shrub" was such a surprise. This book looked like dripy ole' southern novel. BUT...how wrong I was. This book was deep, emotional and I loved the characters. DEEPLY. This is such a great book.....it's clear, enjoyable, and such a pleasant surprise.

It has been three years since Lucy Richards returned from Estelline. Taking over the family hardware store and caring for family has taken her mind off her sister's betrayal and the man she had planned to marry, perhaps too well. Lucy feels that she may be too comfortable, and that life in Bonham may not hold much for her. When Josh Arnold visits Lucy on his way to Sweet Shrub, Arkansas(where he is to read law) he makes it clear in no uncertain terms that he is still interested in Lucy, and that he won't take no for an answer. Lucy discovery that her heart is once again willing to trust combined with Josh's insistance and the impending visit of Lucy's sister and former fiancee, propells Lucy to accept his proposal. Together they move to Sweet Shrub. Just as she had faced change and adversity when she left home to teach, Lucy is faced with a whole new life to claim. She is faced by the prejudices and fears of the townfolk, and must turn to Josh and an inner strength she did not realize she had to survive. This is the second in three books, and is told in a very different way than the first. The author is very skillful in including the events of the early 1900's, impending world war, friction between races and small town dynamics to weave a wonderful story of life in Texas.

This is one of those not bad, but not really good books.
After meeting that most horrible of fates for a woman, being jilted by her fiance, Lucy Richards ( whom I thought was supposed to be strong) abandons her teaching career in west Texas and flees back to her hometown of Bonham, where she hopes to scare up an alternate husband.
Once back home, Lucy frets incessantly about being "an old maid" and contemplates marriage to any one of three admirers, none of whom she loves. But Prince Charming, in the form of Josh Arnold, a west Texas friend, rides to the rescue.
Lucy agrees to marry Josh, seemingly more out of a desire to marry somebody, anybody, than from genuine affection for Josh.
Oddly enough, the rather unlikely couple enjoys a blissful marriage with lots of sex ( described in more detail than some readers may want).
The unrelenting bliss ( but not the sex) lets up a little when the couple relocates to Arkansas, where the whites are bigoted and the blacks "uppity".
The fates of some of the characters is left dangling, to be sort of resolved in the final book of the trilogy.
This book makes for light, pleasant summer reading, but don't expect much depth.

I read the first book in the trilogy and picked up A Place Called Sweet Shrub just because the author had killed off so many characters in the first and left much unanswered that I naively thought resolution would come in the sequel. I was wrong. Lucinda had so much going for her in the West Texas hardened by encounters with Christobel and Mrs. Sully that I thought her character would continue to grow. Instead, the book was a grandiose setup for the time displaced rehash of a race riot. The ribald humor was misplaced and characters are killed off haphazardly. I knew not to expect plot resolution, but some motivation would have been appreciated.