3 out of 4 stars
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The book tells a story about a teenage girl meeting her roots and identifying her origin. Sarah becomes an orphan after her mother's death and is brought to her divorced grandparents by her step dad. She meets the Native American friends of her grandfather Tom (William and his daughter Myra) and joins them on a hike they had been planning for a long time. Here she learns about her ancestors and later encounters some strange visions, which may or may not be real.
The book touches many interesting points. First of all, it talks about the importance of our origin and how it affects our lives. It teaches to be respectful towards the nature and history. It also displays examples of how modern businesses don't really care about the environment and are eager to bury hundreds of centuries of archaeological evidence to mine for expensive minerals.
"Strong Heart" covers the character development of a teenage girl in a modern society. During our teenage years our character formation is most vulnerable to external influences. Sarah starts out as a stereotypical difficult teenager, which is understandable as it seems like no one really took care of raising her properly. She acts as if no one really understands her, trusts her or values her opinion. However, she has some principles she has developed on her own. Later in the story, she encounters attempts of domestic violence and rebels against her family, like her mother did once. Overall, Sarah identifies herself as a girl with a strong heart and a huge will power, despite the horrific events in her life.
The story touches the hidden sides of the modern family as well. Tom's divorce didn't only affect his own life but, basically, ruined that of his daughter and left a great negative influence on his granddaughter. His ex-wife Ruth was so blinded with her second attempt to become happy, that she closed her eyes on the terrible events happening to her daughter in her own house. Don't we all do this sometimes: hushing ourselves and acting as if everything's okay, while in fact there are things that cannot and should not go unnoticed? Well, "Stong Heart" implies that this should not be the case.
There are a few things I didn't like about the book as well. Firstly, although mostly well written, at times I felt like the dialogues were a bit dull and even left unfinished from time to time. Also, quite often there were examples of tautology like the example brought below:
This conversation went on and on: rephrasing and repeating the same idea, sometimes using the same words. And there were multiple such cases.I did not say you are confusing belief with fact, Myra. In America these past few years, many people now do confuse belief with fact. They feel something is true only if they strongly believe it is so, as if utter faith equals truth.
Same applies to the relationship development. The author gives a hint that 2 characters might grow feelings for each other by showing a tension between them. They argue and fight a lot, and there's always someone implying that this means they like each other, which they deny energetically every time. Although acceptable at first, this gets quite boring after the 5th encounter.
Secondly, there was a strong hint to an interesting plot twist, which was left incomplete. The author tried to draw parallels between the heroes of Sarah's vision and her friends and family, a bit like in "The Life of Pi". Yet, after doing a few attempts of identifying the relation between the characters, the author then concentrates on the scientific aspects of Sarah's vision.
Overall, I don't regret reading "Stong Heart". I might have liked it more during my teenage years, so I'd say that is the audience it should target. The story starts off quick and never really gets boring (not counting the dull dialogues and tautology described above). It is an educating adventure, with some history about the Native American tribes, as well as a description of the formation of humanity as it is. I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars.
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Strong Heart
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