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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mistake: this is for Jewel of Promise, April 10, 2002
This review is from: The Silver Highway (Treasure Quest Series #3) (Paperback)
I noticed this mistake a week ago, I thhink, and I hope that Amazon will simply remove this review, since I wrote a new one for Jewel of Promise after noticing that this review, somehow posted here by accident, had not appeared on the page for the fourth, concluding Treasure Quest Book, and I like my later-written review better. I don't know if I mistakenly wrote my review on this page, or if maybe some glich on Amazon's part caused it to appear on the wrong page, but below--if Amazon doesn't simply read these opening sentences and sensibly delete this review for me, which would be nice of them--you, the browwsing customer, will see the review of _Silver Highway_ that I wrote four years ago when using my previous Email address. Ignore the rest of this review, pleazsse, but visit the page for _Jewel of Promise_ and the other TQ books. you'll find the I love reading fiction and nonfiction about American history, from the colonial period through the nineteenth century, so I read this and the preceding three Treasure Quest titles shortly after finding out about them. I began this book, as I did the third book in this series, only hours after finishing the previous book, to complete a week-long, satisfying reading marathon. _Jewel of Promise_ reconnects readers with Alex and Olivia, the couple who came together in the series's opening book, _The Silver Highway_ but who were not seen in _Colorado Gold_ or _Out of the Crucible_. After a visit to South Carolina, both to introduce olivia for the first time to Alex's parents and to see for themselves that the national reconciliation they desire cannot be gained without sacrificing the goals that they have come to share, Alex and Olivia return to friends in Pennsylvania, and the war eventually separates them. Meanwhile, Olivia's brother, Matthew, and his wife, Crystal, return to the East, to both my and Olivia's satisfaction, but soon they too face trials of separation and the difficulty of enduring fear and uncertainty when the chaos of war makes it impossible to know where a soldier is at times. The stories of these two couples and of the Irish-American pilot of Alex's steamboat and the teenage runaway, Beth, with whom he falls in love, are intertwined into one whole story that alternately brought moments of pleasure, made me cry, and made me wonder how the characters would escape various suspenseful predicaments, from arriving in unfamiliar towns only to be stranded by converging armies, being taken prisoner, trying to find purpose after the war delivers a seemingly insurmountable emotional blow, or discovering too late that one has made a horrible mistake as a novice spy. Ultimately Marian Wells drew all of the plot threads together into a triumphant climax. Although I wondered afterward what Alex, Olivia, Crystal, and Matthew would have gone on to do after the book's end, if they had been real people, I don't think that wells could have shown that satisfactorily without starting a new book. This book ended where it needed to.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This made me eager to read the rest of the series., September 19, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: The Silver Highway (Treasure Quest Series #3) (Paperback)
When I read _The Silver Highway_, I intended to stretch my reading of the Treasure Quest Series out, as I was in school. Within weeks, though, I found that I couldn't stand to wait, checked the three sequels out of the library, and devoured them in just a week. This book introduces over half of the recurring characters. In the mid-1850's Olivia Thomas's parents send her off to a Boston boarding school because she will not behave quietly, riding about the plantation in her absent brother's old clothes and protesting the overseer's whipping of a slave. En route to the school, Olivia befriends another of its new students, a dark-complected Creole named Crystal, who hopes to learn about a female relative who was in Boston years ago, whom her parents have never talked about. Olivia's parents feel sure that the Boston school will help to make her a proper southern lady, since it is well-supervised, and her brother, Matthew, attending nearby Harvard, can check on her now and then. Olivia meets Matthew's best friend, Alex Duncan, but isn't impressed. Before the year is out, Crystal is called home by her parents, and Alex, who is under pressure from a family friend to enter southern politics after graduation, disappears. He has met some famous abolitionists after waking up from a drunken spree and been impressed by them, but Matthew and Olivia have no idea what has become of him. Further events draw all four of these young people and another recurring character, Amelia Randolph, together on Alex's boat transporting slaves tup the Mississippi to Canada. Along the way some will be converted to lived, rather than merely formal, Christianity and to conscious opposition to slavery, while some will decide to head west to the new Colorado Territory on the eve of the Civil War. Marion Wells evokes her settings, the changed time of year at a new chapter's start, and her character's states of mind with bright clarity. In the copy that I read, I found one flawed historical detail, discussion of a "Missouri Compromise of 1850," a consolidation of two political compromises, but I was anxious to learn what would happen to the characters, and the series was worth the flaw, which for all I know may have been corrected in later printings. This flaw is the only reason that I did not rate the book 5 stars.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
The North and the South are different worlds, October 5, 2005
This review is from: The Silver Highway (Treasure Quest Series #3) (Paperback)
This book is a bit confusing in that it is a prequel which itself has a sequel, yet Colorado Gold is listed as book one...anyway, this introduces the reader to the underground railroad and those who have been changed from southern slave holders to abolitionists after hearing the truth and reading the Bible. I recognized several of the characters from Colorado Gold, and I am glad the author chose to go back and include some vital history.
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