Review by DominicVenditti -- Strong Heart
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DominicVenditti
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Review by DominicVenditti -- Strong Heart
[Following is a volunteer review of "Strong Heart" by Charlie Sheldon.]
Ever since I was about five or six, I’ve been somehow affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America. This of course, entails camping and time in the outdoors, both of which I received plenty of experience and time in. When you spend enough time outside of civilization it begins to really change your general outlook on the world and your place in it. I can personally see much of that in the settings and characters of Charlie Sheldon’s Strong Heart, a story where just that happens to a select group of people as they go off into the great northwest wilderness of the United States and are fundamentally changed in many ways by their excursion.
The plot centers around how William is introduced and united with his juvenile
delinquent granddaughter, Sarah. This proves to be an inopportune time as William his father Tom, and his wife Myra, were planning a hiking trip into the wilderness to visit Tom’s grandfather’s grave. Along the way, they become engrossed in each other’s experiences throughout their lives and become profoundly impacted by their time with each other and in the vast wilderness.
Overall, the book took me back to days long past. As stated earlier, I’ve spent an ample amount of time in the great outdoors and that has greatly impacted me not only back then, but who I am today. Reading this book reminded me dearly of how such a paramount time throughout my life has affected me to this day, and how it granted me solace through some rather volatile episodes that I’ve experienced. I fell that this book will evoke the same senses in others who have spent considerable time in the wilderness and seen just what it has to offer and how it can change somebody. I feel one with substantial experience camping and hiking, along with similar activities, will appreciate much of this book.
All that being said, I do not believe this book is impeccable with regards to execution. At many times certain key elements of describing a story, such as what the characters look like and feel, and how certain settings are described seem to be unexplored and poorly elaborated on. From the point of view of the reader, this can lead to a less enriching and more dull experience when there is plenty of potential to be expressive and enlightening with this kind of plot and setting. It is for that reason that I feel the average reader would feel uninterested and overall dismayed by the way this story is presented.
Generally speaking, it is a decent product however and does what it intends to do in a satisfactory, although at times bare-boned, manner. It is for that reason that I give this book three out of four stars, or more specifically, a seventy out of one hundred. There simply is not enough elaboration and description from a storytelling standpoint to really make it seem alive unless one has been in a situation like that, and with regards to sympathizing with the human aspect of the story its mostly the same thing. Despite how the book is extremely well edited form a grammatical standpoint, a run-through of it with more attention to painting a picture in the mind of the reader would be of immense value. In conclusion, if you passed this one you wouldn’t be missing a whole lot, but one could easily make this a decent way to amuse themselves if without anything of consequence to do.
******
Strong Heart
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Ever since I was about five or six, I’ve been somehow affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America. This of course, entails camping and time in the outdoors, both of which I received plenty of experience and time in. When you spend enough time outside of civilization it begins to really change your general outlook on the world and your place in it. I can personally see much of that in the settings and characters of Charlie Sheldon’s Strong Heart, a story where just that happens to a select group of people as they go off into the great northwest wilderness of the United States and are fundamentally changed in many ways by their excursion.
The plot centers around how William is introduced and united with his juvenile
delinquent granddaughter, Sarah. This proves to be an inopportune time as William his father Tom, and his wife Myra, were planning a hiking trip into the wilderness to visit Tom’s grandfather’s grave. Along the way, they become engrossed in each other’s experiences throughout their lives and become profoundly impacted by their time with each other and in the vast wilderness.
Overall, the book took me back to days long past. As stated earlier, I’ve spent an ample amount of time in the great outdoors and that has greatly impacted me not only back then, but who I am today. Reading this book reminded me dearly of how such a paramount time throughout my life has affected me to this day, and how it granted me solace through some rather volatile episodes that I’ve experienced. I fell that this book will evoke the same senses in others who have spent considerable time in the wilderness and seen just what it has to offer and how it can change somebody. I feel one with substantial experience camping and hiking, along with similar activities, will appreciate much of this book.
All that being said, I do not believe this book is impeccable with regards to execution. At many times certain key elements of describing a story, such as what the characters look like and feel, and how certain settings are described seem to be unexplored and poorly elaborated on. From the point of view of the reader, this can lead to a less enriching and more dull experience when there is plenty of potential to be expressive and enlightening with this kind of plot and setting. It is for that reason that I feel the average reader would feel uninterested and overall dismayed by the way this story is presented.
Generally speaking, it is a decent product however and does what it intends to do in a satisfactory, although at times bare-boned, manner. It is for that reason that I give this book three out of four stars, or more specifically, a seventy out of one hundred. There simply is not enough elaboration and description from a storytelling standpoint to really make it seem alive unless one has been in a situation like that, and with regards to sympathizing with the human aspect of the story its mostly the same thing. Despite how the book is extremely well edited form a grammatical standpoint, a run-through of it with more attention to painting a picture in the mind of the reader would be of immense value. In conclusion, if you passed this one you wouldn’t be missing a whole lot, but one could easily make this a decent way to amuse themselves if without anything of consequence to do.
******
Strong Heart
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Latest Review: East Wind, 2nd edition by Jack Winnick
