The Last Runaway in Crazy Challenge Connection

Jan 05, 2013 Chaitra rated it liked it

I did not like this as much as I thought I would. I like Chevalier, I like Historical Fiction, and I adore books of this period. That's why the book gets a three star rating from me, but it leans towards the lower end of the 3. The book's weakness to me is the wishy-washy main character Honor Bright. She drifts along with events, believes in Silence so much that she doesn't seem to have any thoughts, and above all she didn't make me believe that she was sincere.

Honor Bright is an English Quaker I did not like this as much as I thought I would. I like Chevalier, I like Historical Fiction, and I adore books of this period. That's why the book gets a three star rating from me, but it leans towards the lower end of the 3. The book's weakness to me is the wishy-washy main character Honor Bright. She drifts along with events, believes in Silence so much that she doesn't seem to have any thoughts, and above all she didn't make me believe that she was sincere.

Honor Bright is an English Quaker, who comes to America to get away from a jilting, ostensibly to help her sister settle into her new home. Her sister succumbs to a yellow fever sickness before she can reach Ohio. Honor, unable to go back to England, but nitpicking away with America because among other things, it is not neat and ordered and there are trees everywhere, decides to continue on to Ohio where she meets a number of interesting characters, all of them somehow connected with fugitive slaves. She continues drifting without purpose until she decides that "the corn is ready" (please don't tell me this used to happen and if it did, is this where the word corny originate from?), and gets married to the second man that happens along. (The first is there to provide some conflict.) Then, she becomes involved in a totally floaty fashion in the Underground Railroad.

Honor is a wispy creature to build a story on. Her main trait is that she's silent, and that she's an expert quiltmaker. This gets us through the first hundred pages. She whines incessantly about where she is - everything is so transient, everyone wants to move away, they have wood houses and not solid stone like in England - all the while forgetting that more and more people were leaving England to make a life in the new world, including herself. She doesn't make any effort to be involved in the Community she believes in so much, so it becomes really hard for us to empathize with her when she says she's friendless. She becomes involved in the Underground Railroad, true, but as I read it, it's used as a backdrop to this wallflower's story, and that's just not interesting. She uses her people's aversion to help fugitive slaves to make a martyr of herself. They have a very compelling reason for the aversion, in spite of which they give her a great deal of latitude. Sure, they could use some spine, and their actions are deplorable and all too common. But, what bothered me with the book is that the girl who will go silent for months on her family in some weird sort of judgment for refusing to help a runaway can see the "Light" in a merciless slave catcher denounced even by his own sister. What kind of person would do that? Other than a horny one having the hots for the slave catcher, I mean. She doesn't actually have the guts to admit that either.

But I do give Chevalier points for a bunch of other things. As always the descriptions of the period, and of the place are great to read. She evokes the transience of the place well. There are some memorable characters - Belle Mills, Donovan, Judith Haymaker, Mrs. Reed. In fact, any one not named Honor Bright happen to have a personality. I would have loved to read a book from Belle's perspective or Mrs. Reed's. Infinitely more interesting characters. The scenes with the fugitives are affecting and I kept wishing that the book had more of that. I even liked the almost endless commentary on Quaker quilting, it was well researched and definitely preferable to the main character's whining. I was looking forward to the book very much, and while it was well-written in the historical point of view, it was a very unsatisfying read. I wish books didn't take something important and trivialize it to a marginality, but insist that it is "very important". We can see it's not. 3 stars for nostalgia.

I received a copy via NetGalley for review. ...more

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Dec 23, 2015 Lindsey rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, american

The character of Honor Bright, an English Quaker immigrating to America to escape the shame of a failed engagement, was superbly written and I felt connected with her emotions as she struggled to fit into the Ohio Quaker society and assist the established Underground Railroad in the community. The only sour note for me was her willingness to enter into a sexual relationship before marriage, leading into an engagement. She just seemed very devout and this struck a wrong note for me. As an aside, ...more

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