Book Review: The Beckoning Road

[osprey_archer]

I finished Caroline Snedeker’s The Beckoning Road, the sequel to Downright Dencey, in which Dencey’s family treks from Nantucket to New Harmony! Snedeker was the descendent of Robert Dale Owen, son of Robert Owen, founder of New Harmony, and the attempted utopian community is an ongoing theme in her books: she also wrote Seth Way: A Romance of the New Harmony Community.

I am a complete sucker for books about utopian experiments: I read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun, based on his experiences at Brook Farm, even though generally I find Hawthorne aggravating. (And indeed he does make some aggravating choices in The Marble Faun! But even so the charm of Brook Farm sometimes glimmers through.) So of course I loved all the New Harmony parts in this, especially the parts about the tension between Dencey’s family’s Quaker principles and the mores of New Harmony, which are so close in some ways but so far apart in others. This comes to a head with regard to the New Harmony dances: Dencey sneaks off to attend one of the dances, and expects condemnation when she’s caught, but her mother has come to see that these dances are part of the community life and as such allows Dencey to go forthwith.

I was also intrigued by the resolution of the Dencey/Jetsam romance set up in Downright Dencey. At the end of Downright Dencey, Jetsam set off on a whaling voyage. About two thirds of the way through The Beckoning Road, Dencey receives nws that Jetsam’s whaling ship went down in the South Pacific, and Jetsam’s boat was seen to be swamped. In an agony of hope, Dencey grieves for a year, before her mother gently but firmly tells her that Jetsam is dead and Dencey is worrying her family to death with the way she’s eating her heart out.

I was SO fascinated by the prospect that Snedeker might actually sink the good ship Dencey/Jetsam and marry Dencey off to her new suitor (a Scottish laird!). I really believed for a few chapters that she would do it! That’s a real testament to Snedeker’s skill, because of course Jetsam returns in the end: I should have known it just by considering the fact that Dencey still hadn’t managed to tell him that she’d come into possession of his fancy baby clothes which prove his gentle birth.

In fact, the ending of the book gets Jetsam and Dencey together AND wraps up the mystery of his parentage: he is the son of a poor but honest Englishman and his wife, the daughter of a lord. So he’s not noble but he does have some noble blood.

Honestly I found the revelation of noble blood a let-down. It’s such a cliche for this kind of foundling story, and in context of this particular story, given the utopian egalitarianism of New Harmony, I really thought it would be more fitting if Jetsam was the son of no one in particular, or even if we never found out who his parents were at all.

But even though that would be more thematically appropriate, it might not be narratively satisfying? I’m pondering this question re: Dencey & the Scottish laird, as well. I was thrilled by the prospect that Snedeker might actually buck convention by killing orf Jetsam and marrying Dencey to someone else, but if that was the book’s actual ending, would I have found it satisfying?

Comments

[asakiyume]

Sometimes I've read books where the apparent (and indeed destined) love interest appears to be killed or made unavailable and someone else appears, and it seems that the protagonist is interested, and reluctantly I've allowed for how as it could maybe work: I can see the good points of the new person, and the interaction seems okay--but often I'm still sad for the original relationship. Which, in books where the original interest is going to turn up, is a good thing!

I get the sense with stories where love is a central part of the plot, the writers are always at pains to guide us so that we don't feel too too attached to a character who's not going to be the final pairing. All those stories where a person's initial SO isn't the one they'll end up with, and the author telegraphs that by showing differences in attitude and revealing flaws in the original person.

If one of the people in the OTP is killed off but the other half of the pair goes on eventually to happiness with someone else, then I feel as if the story would morph into a how-love-can-bloom-again -type story?

One thing that was notable in Lloyd Alexander's Prydain chronicles was that Taran **wasn't** a secret prince. I liked that.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I think most authors try to make sure that readers will be on board with the final pairing. Not that it always works! (Think Team Edward and Team Jacob in Twilight...)

I'm trying to think if I've read a book that fully develops one pairing, only to kill one of the characters and pair the remaining character with someone else. That might be difficult to fit in one book, though. Something like that happens in Marie Brennan's Lady Trent books, but the original love interest dies in the first book, so we didn't have that much time to get attached.

I've heard that there's a storyline like this in the Anita Blake books, but nothing else I've heard about Anita Blake inclines me to read the series.

[regshoe]

Those destined romances, eh... :/ That is frustrating about the noble blood (I'm re-reading John Halifax, Gentleman at the moment, a book which is similarly hypocritical about birth and class: John Halifax starts off poor and earns his place in society through honest hard work and is so much better than all the aristocrats, but it's very important that he definitely is also of 'gentlemanly' birth, in fact that's the reason he has such a noble and honest character), but the New Harmony stuff sounds really interesting.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, it's a very half and half approach to noble blood. The character is a self-made man who achieves success through his own hard work and noble character! (In Jetsam's case, a well-concealed noble character, but it's there nonetheless.) But the noble character is in itself a result of gentlemanly birth, thus looping back around to "Blood will always tell."