Customer Reviews

The River Between Us

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

In The River between Us, Richard Peck has created a novel-long flashback, sandwiched between chapters spoken to us through the eyes of a young man travelling with his father to the town where his dad grew up.

The flashback is the story of the young man?s grandmother, Tilly Pruitt, who lived in the small Mississippi River town of Grand Tower along with her brother Noah, her frail little sister Cass, and their mother. One day, their very normal, hardworking town is turned on end when two mysterious young ladies step off the riverboat. Tilly?s mom, in need of money and sheepishly curious about the girls, invites them to stay at their home, unknowingly inviting them into their lives forever.

As the war comes closer to the river, the townspeople begin whispering about the girls?Delphine, a lovely, well-dressed, refined and precocious young lady from New Orleans and Calinda, Delphine?s mysterious black servant. It is Noah?s decision to join the army and Delphine?s stubbornness that causes Tilly to learn more about her relationship with her mother and her own ability to ?put some starch in her spine.?

There is a great secret at work in this novel, and the reader knows it from the moment Delphine and Calinda enter the lives of the Pruitt family. What emerges is a story about family, friendship, disparity, courage, enchantment, mystery, and war.

Peck?s writing is brilliant in that he is constantly teasing the reader with hints, practically inviting him/her to just go ahead and guess what?s going to happen. This book will remind readers that accidental moments can change the history of entire generations of people.

With this novel, Richard Peck has sealed his place as one of THE best writer's of young adult fiction!

The book opens with a fifteen year old boy, his father and his two five year old brothers traveling to Grand Tower, Illinois. It?s 1916 and the description of traveling by car is impressive; four flat tires in one day, cranking the Ford to get it started.

In Grand Tower, the boy meets his relatives, old Tilly, her husband Dr. Hutchings, Tilly?s twin brother Noah, and his wife Delphine. The story then jumps back in time to 1861. Tilly and Noah live with their mother and young sister Cass in this small town off of the Mississippi River. One evening, a boat stops and drops off a girl with violet eyes and grand skirts and a quiet, dark-skinned girl. The two girls from New Orleans, named Delphine and Calinda, move in with the Pruitt family and immediately change their lives. Tilly learns of the torture of wearing corsets, how Calinda makes pralines, and just how bad tensions between the Yankees and the Secessioners have become in the South. Still, little is known about the two girls. Is Calinda a slave? A servant? Has she been freed? Are they escaping from something?

All questions are put on hold as Noah volunteers to fight for the Union Army. Then Tilly and Delphine become even closer as they travel to Cairo to find Noah and hopefully bring him home in one piece. They learn much about themselves and about each other, and that the bonds of friendship transcend the ideals of war.

Richard Peck has written an extraordinary portrait of life for a Northern and Southern girl during the American Civil War. I never guessed exactly what Delphine?s story was and was surprised by the many twists in the story. I would highly recommend this book to teens interested in historical fiction, especially those interested in learning about war and racial tension in America. This is a tremendous little book.

Peck has followed Mildred Taylor's "The Land" with another expose' of the exploitation of women of color by gentrified white men of the South up to the Civil War. It was a norm and secret that deserves unmasking for American children.

But the book is so much more. Peck takes the reader on an road trip with a father and his sons by touring car in 1916 for a family reunion with elders. It is the elders' story told as teens experiencing Succession and the beginning of the Civil War in a region around the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. With this, Peck also brings in the cultural history of New Orleans. The artifacts and other markers for the time period are totally engrossing. Mystery and surprising revelations abound.

It's a fascinating read by a master writer.

Tilly and her family are awaiting the start of the Civil War, fearing its approach to their small town and observing increasing divisions between north and south in their own world. The arrival in town of a glamorous young lady and her dark servant changes Tilly's world as the war's issues come to roost in her very house. The River Between Us is a masterful, realistic, fictional story of Civil War issues and times.

The war that split this country apart has begun. Tilly Pruitt, her sister Cass, and her brother Noah are preparing for what could be a long and stressful war. One day, Cass runs home crying that she had seen a horrible vision of Union and Confederate soldiers dying. Noah soon takes matters into his own hands by joining the Union army. Because of this, the two had more back-aching chores to do. And if they thought that this was enough, a passanger boat shows up in the small town. A wealthy girl comes down the gangplank and looks for a place to stay. Tilly and her family accept the girl, whose name is Delphine, and her companion, who appears to be a slave, Calinda. As soon as she arrives, she haves an instant effect on the house. For one thing, Noah gets all nervous just a couple of days before he leaves. Also, Delphine starts treating Tilly like a servant, and starts influencing Tilly and Cass to start wearing wealthy clothes. Calinda starts hanging out with Cass as she also has visions. One day, the family even goes to see a play on a showboat. Soon, however, problems occur. Everyone in the town thinks that the Pruitts support the South because Delphine is from New Orleans. However, it soon becomes clear that the reason that Delphine moved was that Calinda was her sister, and she is part African-American. The two soon see that Noah is in a hospital, and they rush to see him sick with his arm cut off. He finally came home, and the family was reunited. Though they never married each other, Noah and Delphine stayed together for a long time after the war. The River Between Us is a great book by Richard Peck.

The River Between Us has great characters with the perfect traits. Tilly is a normal girl from the mid 1800's who is a hard working person and is kind to other people. An example of this is when she visits the hospital that Noah is in. She helps all of the people there feel better and gives them rest. While she is there, she works for the men tohelp save as many as she can from the bottom of her heart.

This book has several portions of suspense. In one part of the book,when everyone sees the Pruitt family take in Delphine, they think that Dephine is a spy sent to the North and that the Pruitt family are pro-Confederates. Calinda has the ability to read cards to predict the future. She foresees death and a coffin floating down the river. Everyone thinks that this person is Noah, until they find out it is someone else. Also, there is the point when everyone thinks that Calinda is Delphine's slave. But the unusual thing is that she is Delphine's sister.

The River Between Us has the right historical information about the Civil War. For example, the military hospital that Noah was in was dirty and unsanitized just like all of the other hospitals in the war. Disease was common, and severe injuries were common. There were many people just like Noah that had a leg or an arm cut off due to their injuries. And many African Americans fleed to the North just like Delphine and Calinda to escape the Confederacy.

The River Between Us is a great book to read if you are into historical fiction, or if you just like to read books. Find it in your neighborhood library or in a bookstore near you. I rate this book four stars out of five.

A. Chappell

For all those who "dislike" historical fiction novels, ignore that label for this latest of Peck's writing sojourns.

This story -told in a most convincing, compelling first person-narrative Peck's choice words, plots and characters leave the reader awash in the tumultous times prior and during the Civil War. Fabulously detailed backdrop + seamless integration of themes sweep the reader along in this haunting and memorable story that will not be forgotten.

This is one of my favorite books. It's exciting, informative, and very interesting. I enjoyed the plot, the suprising ending, and all the little details. Delphine was probably my favorite character.
Overall, I recommend this book to all historal fiction and Richard Peck fans. And to just about anyone else!

I love this historicle fiction book, it used GREAT discription and had a great plot that kept me interested the intire time! Although some parts were very sad, and the time change was rather confusing I loved it. The book tells a story of a boy in the civel war. He has just turned 16 and is allowed to join the army. He is eager to fight for the North. Then a misterious girl appears off a boat and is welcomed into the Pruitt family. The girl appears to be keeping Noah from leaving and the mother is thankful for that. What will hapen? I LOVE this book!!!

The book is about a fifteen-year-old girl named Tilly Pruitt and her family: Mom, Cass, her younger sister who sees visions and can tell the future, and Noah, Tilly's twin. Their dad/husband has died a long time ago; life was complicated and stressful to the Pruitt family. Mom still misses her husband, Cass is having the worst visions ever from the past and future, Noah wants to join his part in the Civil War. Tilly is in the thick of it and doesn't know what to do, till one day a New Orleans lady and another lady (her slave?) comes off a steamboat: their names are Delphine Duval and Calinda. Tilly's Mom lets them inside, and this is how just one little thing changed the Pruitt family's life.

I like this book because of the following reasons. The book showed how just one little thing changed the entire family's life; every single one of them. This relates to the life right now: how kindness can be received back to something even greater, like happiness to the Pruitt family. Another is how mysterious this book was, although I do hate waiting most of the time, this time it was worth it. Like how in the book it says that Delphine was really a free woman..of color. As it says in the book, (Delphine) "French blood flow through me and Spanish blood and African blood. It is the African blood they despise. Is it not curious?"

Despise all things, however, there are some things that I wished the author of the book never added in, like pain, death, saddness. Noah lost an arm in the story, Tilly was betrayed of her mother after she commited suicide and told Tilly that she'd rather have Noah then her in the book as it says here, "Don't come back without him. I can spare you. I can't spare him." Cass saw death in her visions and in the future, it seemed so stressful for her that in a way it seemed scary. In the end, surprisingly, everything turned out fine, even if several things were lost.

My least favorite part of the book was when Tilly heard that she was betrayed. How would you like it if your own mother told you the same thing? It's like saying that she wished that you were never born at all and would rather have another sibling instead. Tilly must've felt sad to know this, depressed, yet in the end she went with Delphine to fetch Noah back from the camp. At least she was loyal; although at the same time she didn't have much choice.

I've read a lot of young adult novels about the American Civil War, but The River Between Us introduced me to a perspective I hadn't considered before - that of the quadroon (a free woman of color). The historical value alone would be enough to get me to recommend the book, but I also liked it as a story. I liked the framing of the main story by the young boy. I liked the distinct voice of Tilly, which to me rang true as an older woman looking back and telling her story. I liked the way Peck revealed the answers to the questions that were building as I read the story - and the way he pulled a surprise on me at the end.

I didn't especially care for the (to me) cliche' of the mother who goes crazy when her son goes to war. The same sort of thing happened in Rosemary Wells' Red Moon at Sharpsburg. I'm sure it was horrible to watch your 16-year-old son (or husband, as in Wells' book) march away to what could be a certain death, and some women might have lost their minds as a result, but I'm a little tired of seeing books fall back on female characters who are too psychologically weak to deal with the situation. Of course, those characters may be there to provide a foil for strong girls like Tilly and Delphine(from this book) and India (from Wells' book).

Use of that cliche' wasn't enough to sour me on the book, though. Every now and then, I would find myself noticing a phrase that captured a way of looking at something that was unique and just perfect, really. This is the first of Peck's books I've read, and I think I can understand why he earned the reputation he has in the top tier of young adult authors.