100 Books, #17: Nekomah Creek

[osprey_archer]

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.

Comments

[lyredenfers.livejournal.com]

I read this book! I always imagined it as vaguely- rural East Coast small town hippies (I had no sense of American geography until about the age of 20 - the word Oregon meant nothing). It makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE now. Cognitive geo-dissonance resolved.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Hee! Yeah, logging hasn't really been a thing on the East Coast since like...the 1700s, so I could see how you were confused!