Simple Gifts is a wildly comic tale about the Fleuris, a poor but engaging family living on a back-country ranch in Colorado. When a government agent persuades them to allow visitors to sample ranch life as it was in the 1880s, one well-intentioned misadventure leads to another.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
YA The Fleuris are poor. Their Colorado ranch has few modern improvements, and the family income is subsidized by selling illegal moonshine and deer out of season. Then Ralph Kelvin appears, representing a government agency called SCELPthe Social, Cultural and Ethnic Life Placement Program of the Department of the Interior. Mr. Kelvin thinks the Fleuri home is an ideal setting for an 1880s-type ranchan ethnic vacation for world-weary professionals who want authenticity and a change from modern times. Daddy Fleuri is dead set against it (with a countryman's innate fear of government meddling), but the rest of the family wants to take a chance. Daddy finally gives in, and the few modern signs of the 1980s disappear as the Fleuris resort to using the tools of their ancestors. The visitors come, and while they work the land, they also cause changes in various members of the family. Greenberg tells this story in viewpoint chapters, using the Fleuris and their guests to move the narrative along. The result is a rich blend of humor, pathos, history, and insight that will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers. Diana Hirsch, PGCMLS, Md.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
The Fleuri ranch on Colorado's Croom Mountain resembles a scene from the 1880s, save for a few modern conveniences such as a tractor, a refrigerator, and a water pump. Life for the Fleuris, who supplement their meager income with moonshine and illegal game, hasn't changed much either. When a government agent persuades them to turn the ranch into a model 1880s homestead for paying visitors, it seems a perfect solution to their plight, until the deed is done. Greenberg deals realistically with the impact of government regulation, social and cultural change, and affluence on a backwoods family, while treating family members with the tenderness, humor, and dignity that each so richly deserves. Recommended. Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Joanne Greenberg stikes again!,
By Daniel Mackler (on the road) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Simple Gifts (Pavanne Books) (Paperback)
Although billed as a comedy, Simple Gifts, despite its comedic elements, is really quite serious. It's about a family who lives on a "backward" ranch in the rural mountains of Colorado, and are struggling to make it financially in the modern and fast-paced world (of the 1980s). They still do many things the old-fashioned way, and haven't gotten with the technical times - and are socially ostracized for it. Their backwardness proves to be their "luck," however, because they are discovered by a goverment agency that wants to send rich and fancy city visitors to live in a true-to-life ranch setting that replicates life of 100 years earlier. The family agrees to go for it, and their ranch is converted to all things 1880s - they rid themselves of all modern appliances, and truly approximate living as people did back then.
That's the set-up for the book. It might seem a little hokey or uninteresting at face value, but in Joanne Greenberg's hands anything can be become gold. And this book does. Her main gift is for creating beautiful, detailed, flesh-and-blood characters that have real, human, living interactions that pull you right in. You empathize with them, with their struggles and dilemmas and pain - and their successes. She is a writer of great dimension, and her characters reflect that. I learn from them, and I love that. Greenberg writes each chapter from a different person's perspective, mostly from the persective of the two parents and four kids, but also from the perspective of various secondary characters in the story. And man, it works! My disbelief was suspended, and I couldn't put the book down. Overall, Greenberg comments on the value of being true to ourselves in this life, on growing and finding our path in an unsupportive world, and on deciding what we value most - and what is worth sacrificing. And she sets all these lessons-to-be in what proves to be a very worthhwhile tale. I expected to laugh while reading this book, but instead I was drawn more to the shadow side of the comedy. I cried several times in the book, and any author who can do that to me is my hero! Enjoy!
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