Customer Reviews

Trouble in Yakima Valley (Megan Parnell Mysteries, Book 3)

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When teenage Megan & her stepbrother Peter spend a couple of weeks helping with a relative's apple harvest, readers get an interesting tour of a working orchard. They befriend a couple of Latino migrant worker teens and learn about their lives. Everyone they meet is good-hearted and likable, except the shadowy villains and the school bully. When sabotage and suspicious accidents begin, the teenagers cooperate to save the orchard. Refreshingly, they don't ignore adult help, as most fictional children do. Some plot devices stretch credulity. The kids bring school assignments with them and also enroll in a local school. They learn to work hard in the orchard, but usually arrive late, leave early, or skip work, acting more like city children of privilege than real workers or helpers in a harvest rush. Since this series is designed as Christian fiction, I wondered how much proselytizing would be pushed into the plot. Attending church and referring to God's help were included as a natural part of life for this Protestant Christian family. Once, Peter expounds too long in explaining how his faith makes him a moral person. Not until the end is the message too intrusive -- and offensive -- , when the author implies that the Hispanic Catholic kids did not know that Jesus cared about them until the white Protestant kids "witness" to them. This reveals the heroes as saintly do-gooders rather than true brothers & sisters of the human race, and mars the general messaage of cross-cultural peacemaking throughout the story.