Haunted Journey

In search of freshwater pearls to help pay off Depression debts, young Obie Wilks, accompanied by his brother's friend and his dog, Chaser, sets off into the Tennessee wilderness toward the sacred Cherokee burial grounds

Grade 7-12 Essentially a coming-of-age saga, Riddell's quasi-allegory deals with Obadiah's determination to overcome the handicaps of his 1930 Tennessee hillbilly life. His father's death has left the family in debt. Obie, almost 15, embarks on a perilous journey to find the secret River Country where his grandfather once found mussel beds that yielded valuable fresh-water pearls. Both Obie and his companion, Bas, are fearful of the mischief-making Nun Yuna Wi, legendary Cherokee immortals known as jealous guardians of the rich mussel beds. Their search is fraught with an overwhelming sense of dark foreboding, perilous clashes with swirling rivers, and struggles through hellish thickets. The boys survive the ordeal, however, and Obie stumbles home with a quantity of precious pearls carefully pocketed. Nothing goes well: Mamma pays off the farm debt but remains cruelly uncommunicative, and Obie's brother steals his share of the pearls, dashing any hope of escape to a good-paying job in Michigan. Then his teacher offers him prospects of a college scholarship and encourages him to stand up to his overbearing mother. Riddell's gift for suspense is riveting, but readers, like Obie, will become so entangled in search and survival and in separating frightful lore from haunted dreams that they will be jolted by the homecoming scene with its abrupt shift to the straightforward and commonplace. One is never quite sure what haunted Obie's journey, nor if it is fully resolved. Katharine Bruner, Brown Middle School, Harrison, Tenn.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Set in Tennessee in the hard times of 1931, this novel concerns young Obie Wilks, who is trying to keep his family together. A real-estate agent is going to take over the Wilks's farm if they can't pay off their debt to him. Obie and his friend Bas have a map based on a legend about massacred Indians in a haunted valley where a huge cache of freshwater pearls can be found. They hike "up-country" and locate the valley; against Bas's sensible advice, Obie tries to amass more pearls than he needs to save the family farm and nearly dies. Once home, Obie realizes that he can't abandon his family to seek his fortune, but finds compensation in the opportunity to try for a college scholarship. With a mix of interesting dialect and ambitious descriptive passages ("the ominous hooting of an unseen owl slithered through the shadows"), the novel is by turns a wilderness adventure tale, a ghost story and a save-the-farm family saga. But the diverse elements never mesh, making this an unsettling, unsatisfying novel. Ages 11-14.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.