I will readily admit that I got sucked in by this cover. I was at gutenberg.org, and it immediately caught my eye. It reminded me of the old Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys covers, and I instantly knew I had to read it. Did I know a single thing about it? Nope.
This book is about the residents of a small town in Virginia as they cope with WWI. Young Dick stumbles upon a mine and wants to find some silver to buy a Liberty Bond, but he wants to do it on his own. The other children compete to find out who can grow the best Victory Garden, and everyone wonders why Dick is so cagey about what he' s up to. With the war going on, a bit of German paranoia affects the town, and some of the residents begin to suspect one another.
This is a tale of two halves. More than the first half felt like a detailed PSA about WWI. I did learn that cotton was so much more versatile than I thought! And then there's the woman who gives a passionate speech to the man who isn't rationing his food while her son may be starving as he fights for freedom. There is a lot of things related to the war going on, just not a lot of mine secrets.
In the second part, the espionage picked up, and the mine was important at the end. Only the very last part was Nancy Drew-ish, making it a bit of a letdown in that respect. My fault for having any kind of expectations, and I take responsibility for that. If I had only read the first half of this book, I wouldn't be that impressed, but the second half pulled its weight fairly well. That leaves me with something of a split decision on the book as a whole. And that doesn't have anything to do with my expectations. The first half was kind of strange any way I look at it.
A couple of my favorite quotes are: "The worst thing that could happen to this world, to us, would be to be infected by the germs of hate." "All the waste and woe of this World War will be worth while if they make people realize the horror and wickedness of war and out an end to it forever." And finally, "And what's a man's life for but to take in his two hands and put where it is needed?"
Overall, it's good and awkward. There were some real gems in there quote-wise, but it was also unbalanced. I'm just on the fence with this one.
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