Customer Reviews

Summer of Pearls

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Though Blakely is known for his historical westerns, SUMMER OF PEARLS is a languorous and warm tale of the South. It is a retrospective -- reminiscent of the style and strength of Mark Helprin's A SOLDIER OF THE GREAT WAR. The detailed growing-up revisit to the past is told by a narrator now in his 80s, but who relates the most eventful summer of his life when he was a boy of 14. The tale is told with the wisdom of years, with language painting a rich and detailed picture, and with the narrator's enduring love for the setting and people around a very real lake on the Texas/Louisiana border.

Ben Crowell is an engaging and real character who encounters romance and treachery as he observes and experiences the emotional spectrum of a town swelling in a boom that is destined to be short-lived. But it is a window of time all the more fiery for it. This summer casts the mold that teaches Ben respect, the value of friendship, and how to be a gentleman.

From the hero Bill Treat, to that low-life Judd Kelso, the book is peopled with fully-realized characters in conflict. The beautiful Carol Anne "Pearl" Cobb, booming Captain Trevor Brigginshaw and Ben's closest friends, Adam and Cecil, all contribute to the shaping of young Ben. As old Ben looks back on that summer, his quest is one of discovery, and that quest will work equally well for the reader who will be caught up in turning the pages of this compelling story. There is adventure, wonder, and discovery enough for everyone.

The more I read Mr. Blakely's novels, the more I'm intrigued by his creative vision. SUMMER OF PEARLS, as far as I can tell, is a departure from his epic American Indian epic, COMANCHE DAWN, and his finely crafted westerns, like SHORTGRASS SONG and TOO LONG AT THE DANCE. What the author demonstrates in his most recent novel is his God-given ability to tell a compelling story--in this case the quiet saga of a dying east Texas town that explodes after the discovery of pearls in Lake Caddo. In my opinion, Blakely has yet to receive the acclaim he deserves. Read this book despite its horrendous cover and see if you don't agree that he's one of the best living writers mining the American historical vein.

Mike Blakely is a gifted writer. Make no mistake about it. Some of his books are epic in scope, theme and characterization. Some, like this one, are set in one little place and involve only a few people. And Mike does each with great grace and skill.

SUMMER OF PEARLS is a wonderful book: a story set in a small town, told by an old man as he looks back on the most enjoyable and meaningful summmer of his life. In scope and feel, the book reminds me very much of that classic movie, DAYS OF HEAVEN (Richard Gere's first movie, I believe). It is contained, the style is spare and crisp, the characters are rich and full, and you leave the novel with that sense of poignancy that we all have when we look back on those bitter sweet times in our lives.

SUMMER OF PEARLS is a beautiful book, in many ways. If you want to find out just how good a writer Mike is, read this, then read COMANCHE DAWN. You will wonder how the same guy could write each. Both very fine novels, but so different from one another.

By 1874, riverboat town Port Caddo was dying due to the Union army winning the recent war and the railroad connecting Texas with Louisiana. The small Texas town gains a minor reprieve when Billy Treat decides to remain in town after his heroic actions. He rescued many people from the recent explosion that destroyed a steamboat.

Billy accepts a job at the local inn when he notices residents collecting pearls from the nearby waters. Billy sends for his friend Trevor Brigginshaw who upon arrival started to buy the pearls. Everyone's hope leaped to the sky until a flood hit and Billy vanished in the waters failing to save Trevor. Not to long afterward, Billy's girl and Trevor's money disappears too.

SUMMER OF PEARLS is a believable coming of age tale told through the eyes of the elderly Ben Crowell looking back over the decades at his youth. Ben was close to Billy and Trevor, wondering over the decades whether they survived the disaster. Talented Mike Blakely has written a unique story that merits a wide audience.

Harriet Klausner

"Summer of Pearls" is not an enthralling read, but a misleading one. The dust jacket describes the book to be full of mystery and endeavors. Rather, it was a retelling of events. I finished the book unsatisfied. It's about a fourteen-year-old boy who recounts the story of the most adventurous summer of his life. It may be a good book for a young male reader, but if you're looking for a thrilling escapade, look elsewhere. For male readers under the age of 13 - I recommend; all other readers - I do not recommend.

Summer of Pearls is different from other Blakely book I have read. I was disappointed at first but the more I read the more I really enjoyed it. It is really about three 14 year old boys and their experience the summer of the pearls. Ben Crowell and his two friends have many things happen to them that summer, the finding of pearls, the catching of fish, the feeding of hogs, carring water and just growing up. Billy Treat is the one that teaches them much, especially Ben. Trevor Brigginshaw is good as the pearl buyer who has come to town. Judd Kelso is the villian. It is but together to make a very good story. It will hold your attention. The ending is great. The whole book I kept thinking of "The Waltons".

Mike Blakely's Summer of the Pearls is a coming of age novel set in Port Caddo, Texas, in the summer of 1874. During the eventful summer, fourteen-year-old Ben Crowley is saved from drowning during a riverboat explosion by the ship's mysterious cook Billy Treat. On returning to Port Caddo, Ben experiences hero worship of Billy, but even stronger is the adolescent's attraction to Carol Anne Cobb, known as Pearl. According to town gossip, she exchanges sexual favors for freshwater pearls from Caddo Lake. Ben sees Billy, who becomes Carol Anne's business partner, as his chief rival and seeks to discredit him with Carol Ann. As the summer progresses, Ben learns about love and treachery and determines he will grow up to be a gentleman, which Billy tells him is the secret in dealing with women. Ben also comes to realize that character is created through an irritant or adversity, just as a pearl is created by a mussel's reaction to an irritant in its shell.

The story is filled with adventure: a pearl rush in Lake Caddo precipitated when Billy invites Aussie Trevor Brigginshaw, a pearl buyer, to look at Carol Anne's collection; incidents involving the Christmas gang, a notorious group near Port Caddo; and the tragic story of a raid by South Sea pirates encountered in an earlier episode by Billy and Brigginshaw, a truly original and tremendously amusing character drawn by Blakely. The book also captures the beauty of the lake with passages such as "the moss in the cypress limbs strained the sunlight like lace as we paddled through air pockets of different temperatures; here as moist and warm as a woman's breath, and there as cool as the draft when she's gone in the night. Caddo Lake was mysterious like a woman. Like life."

The novel is quite a change of pace from Blakely's masterpiece Comanche Dawn, a carefully researched work in which he traces the birth of the Comanche nation through the story of Horseback, a fictional chief. It is also very different from the fascinating saga Saltgrass Song and its sequel Too Long at the Dance, in which Blakely creates the tale of a singer and story teller, who may in the way the protagonist is drawn but not in the plot itself remind readers familiar with Blakely's formidable ability as a songwriter-performer of the author himself. Summer of Pearls is a quicker read and like To Kill a Mockingbird and other books of rites of passage can be enjoyed by almost anyone...adolescent or adult. Yet it bears the hallmarks of all of Blakely's books: the eye toward history in setting and detail, the humor and adventure, and the deep love of the outdoors expressed in the precise images of someone well familiar with what he writes about but colored simultaneously by imagination and even, at times, poetic language. Those familiar with descriptions of the moon and stars running through other works by Blakely are not surprised, for example, that a key image in this book occurs when Billy tells Ben true love is as rare as seeing the moon through a rainbow (also a simile for a pearl) and then that image in turn forms the triumphant conclusion of the book.

Jo Ann Pevoto Humanities Professor Emeritus College of the Mainland