Review of Strong Heart

[Kalebbranch1998]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Strong Heart" by Charlie Sheldon.]

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3 out of 4 stars

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Strong Heart, by Charlie Sheldon, is the story of a girl (Sarah), her grandfather (Tom), his friend, and his friend’s daughter and their hiking trips to visit the Tom’s grandfather’s grave. Like many stories this one begins late on a dark and stormy night with the appearance of a mysterious character. In this case it’s Sarah that appears on her grandfather’s doorstep. Tom had never met or even known about the existence of his granddaughter, but since the death of Sarah’s mother Tom’s daughter it falls on Tom to take care of her. Her arrival falls on the eve of the beginning of a trip to return a mysterious Native American artifact to the place it was found. This forces Tom to decide whether he should bring his newfound granddaughter, but he later comes to question whether it was her that brought him on a journey.

Strong Heart, by Charlie Sheldon, was enjoyable in large part due to the diverse story telling methods, interesting use of parallel storylines, and the way that scientific theories were used to help motivate the story. Throughout the book Charlie Sheldon regularly switched from a more modern sounding storytelling voice to one that was meant to emulate the way Native American Folklore is told. This added to the realism by allowing the reader to see the story through the narrator’s eyes a little better. The two different story lines that were present in the novel paralleled each other by telling what seemed to be the same story but in two different times. The scientific theories driving the plot did not become a large part of the story until the second half of the book, but they added a lot of complexity to the story.

The largest drawback of this book was its poor use of dialogue. The dialogue between the Tom and Sarah was far from believable. Sarah spoke like a punk rock kid from the 90’s even though the book seemed to be set after 2010. This was not a huge draw back because casual conversation between the characters was not plentiful but whenever it did take place their dialogue did distract from the story.

This book is 3 out of 4 for me. If there were a middle rating that is exactly what it would be. While this is a good book it is not one that one should go out of their way to read. It is certainly enjoyable and worth the read but the poor use of dialogue hurt the book.

This book is good for anyone interested in Native American lore and Early Human History.

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Strong Heart
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