The Silver Star

I know I was unfair going into this book with super high expectations. I really wanted to love it, and about chapter four I realized that I just did not. That said, The Silver Star is not a bad book. It is a little afterschool special-ly. And this is something I would expect to find in a middle grade or YA book, not a novel by a storyteller I would trust to take me anywhere. It did have it's points. It had a lot of points- racism, bullying, power, bad adults, small minded townspeople, etc. Sometimes, it is as if we are reading To Kill a Mockingbird Jr. It reminded me a bit of Beautiful Creatures-a song of the South. The parts that really worked for me concerned the Wyatts and the mill workers. The entire book could have been about them, and I think it would have had that Faulkner feel. I probably would have liked it more. I could not stand the mother. I saw the Maddox thing coming from a mile away and was impatient with that story line. I was most interested in the forced inclusion of African Americans into the high school, but that conflict seemed to resolve as long as the sports teams were winning. Uncle Tinsley rocked (he was played by Jeremy Irons in my mind). Overall, I'm glad I read it, but wish I had gone into it with much lower expectations.