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100 Books, #17: Nekomah Creek
Linda Crew’s Nekomah Creek was an unusual favorite for me in my youth, because it had a male protagonist. It stars Robbie, a young lad who loves books - why, yes, I did tend to pick my favorite characters on the basis that they were a lot like me.
Robbie is a fun character and I like him a lot, but what really makes Nekomah Creek special is, well, Nekomah Creek: the rural Oregon community where the book is set. Robbie’s family lives in a converted barn: there’s a beautiful scene where they light a whole row of jack-o-lanterns on their porch, and then wend slowly up the drive to admire them. The setting isn’t just there, but shapes the story; this is a story that had to happen here.
It’s a land of mountains and pine trees and tension between the old settlers, loggers who live off those trees, and newcomers (like Robbie’s family) who moved there for the natural beauty - tensions that ring down from the adults to shape the children’s lives. Although Robbie’s own story wraps up beautifully, the tensions are not resolved - and are not, in the larger sense, resolvable; and Crew never pretends they are.
Robbie is a fun character and I like him a lot, but what really makes Nekomah Creek special is, well, Nekomah Creek: the rural Oregon community where the book is set. Robbie’s family lives in a converted barn: there’s a beautiful scene where they light a whole row of jack-o-lanterns on their porch, and then wend slowly up the drive to admire them. The setting isn’t just there, but shapes the story; this is a story that had to happen here.
It’s a land of mountains and pine trees and tension between the old settlers, loggers who live off those trees, and newcomers (like Robbie’s family) who moved there for the natural beauty - tensions that ring down from the adults to shape the children’s lives. Although Robbie’s own story wraps up beautifully, the tensions are not resolved - and are not, in the larger sense, resolvable; and Crew never pretends they are.