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Summary
Summary
Once every now and again a new voice emerges to astonish and Mary Relindes EllisÂs is one such voice. Lyrical, assured and deeply felt, EllisÂs debut novel is the story of two brothers, their parents, and their neighbors, who farm in the gloriously beautiful, isolated country of northern Wisconsin, inhabited by working-class European immigrants and the Ojibwe.By 1967, the Lucas farm has fallen into disrepair, thanks to the hard-drinking of John Lucas, who brutalizes his wife and two sons, James and Bill. The elder brother, James, escapes by enlisting in the Marines and fighting in Vietnam, a conflict he does not survive. Young Bill is left to protect his mother, with only his own will and the spirit of his dead brother to guide him. The warrior of the title, Bill fashions a shield from a giant turtle shell that he believes keeps him from harm. And, as he faces manhood, he longs to create a family very different from his fatherÂsÂa family that must include not only his damaged mother, but the elderly couple who offered him safe haven in his bleakest days.In The Turtle Warrior, Ellis takes the reader from the heartland of America to the battlefields of World War II and Vietnam, weaving a haunting tale of an unforgettable world where the physical and spiritual, the past and present merge.Lushly evoking both the natural world and the complexities of human relationships, The Turtle Warriorwill speak directly to the hearts of readers everywhere, especially to admirers of Leif Enger, Russell Banks, and Leslie Marmon Silko.
Author Notes
Mary Ellis is the best selling author of seven Amish inspirational novels that include The Wayne County series and The Miller Family series. She grew up in Ohio close to an Amish community. Before becoming a full-time writer, Mary taught middle school and worked as a sales rep for Hershey Chocolate.
All three of her Miller Family series books have made the CBA and CBD bestseller lists. A Widow's Hope was a finalist in the ACFW Carol Awards for 2010 and a runner-up in the 2010 Holt Medallion Awards.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This sensitive, melancholic first novel by Midwestern short story writer Ellis probes the troubled heart of a Wisconsin farm family. John Lucas is a subsistence farmer and an abusive alcoholic feared by his wife and his children, James and Bill. In 1967, 18-year-old Jimmy, who slicks his hair into a pompadour and plays pranks on gentle eight-year-old Bill, enlists in the Marines, intending, in part, to prove something to the brutal father who'd lied about his own military service. But when Jimmy goes missing in action, he abandons to their fate those he had always protected-his mother, Claire, and vulnerable Bill, who must bear the savage brunt of John's self-loathing and failure as a farmer. Claire is an educated woman whose marriage breaks her spirit; though Bill spends time with a kind, childless couple, Ernie and Rosemary Morriseau, he is damaged physically and emotionally. From alternating points of view, Ellis reveals the details of decades of family life (from 1967 to 2000) in the Lucas and Morriseau households-including the meeting, courtship and marriage of each couple after World War II. The upshot is that Jimmy's affecting saga gets lost amid all the history, though Jimmy does return from the dead to tell his war story ("I have feelings too, which is weird"). Bill's tale is also dark; though he believes that the turtle shell shield he makes will protect him, he grows into a man haunted by his past. Though she lays on the pathos a bit too thick, Ellis's debut is affecting and sometimes gorgeously poetic. (Jan. 5) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
In Wisconsin's far north, an isolated family is torn by war from within and without. The father is a merciless, violent drunk. The mother is an intelligent, educated woman who fears she is losing her mind. Their older son is a gifted outdoorsman who escapes by joining the marines to fight in Vietnam. Their younger son is dreamy, introspective, and frighteningly vulnerable. Childless neighbors see the family's struggles and help as best they can. Told from many perspectives, this epic of the emotions explores themes of war, loss, and family, showing the paralysis of grief and the healing power of nature. It's unfortunate for Ellis that Oprah is now focusing on classics, as this first novel has all the types (alcoholic father, abused mother and children, sage Indian) and elements (addiction stories, a spirit presence, the formation of a nontraditional family) required for membership in the first incarnation of the talk show host's book club. Those who are drawn to these themes should find Ellis' debut a moving addition to the canon. --Keir Graff Copyright 2003 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-A well-written, if somewhat dark, novel. It's 1967 on a northern Wisconsin farm, and 8-year-old Billy Lucas watches as his 17-year-old brother, Jimmy, shoots a snapping turtle in the jaw. The ultrasensitive child tries to save the wounded animal, an action that becomes a metaphor throughout the book. The childless couple next door, Ernie and Rosemary Morriseau, treat the neglected boys as their own. Ernie is half Native American and deemed inferior by Mr. Lucas and other farmers in the area. When Jimmy enlists and is sent to Vietnam, Ernie, a World War II veteran, feels guilty for not having stopped him. Once Jimmy is listed as MIA, his spirit returns to the farm where he is spotted by several of the characters. Billy withdraws into a silent, morose teenager; his father drinks behind the barn, hiding bottles of liquor under the soil. His mother walks the farm in her dirty housecoat and curlers talking to herself. And the Morriseaus stop communicating with them. When John Lucas dies, the adult Billy takes on his father's abusive and alcoholic persona, and Ernie tries to save him as he was unable to save his brother. This lyrically written novel is filled with descriptions of farming and has themes of alcoholism, parental abuse, prejudice against Native Americans, and coming-of-age problems.-Pat Bender, The Shipley School, Bryn Mawr, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A troubled midwestern family tries to overcome the ravages of a violently abusive father and husband. In spite of its Swedish name, Olina, Wisconsin is one of the least exotic places in the Upper Midwest--a flat, windswept, almost barren landscape of subsistence farms carved out of stubborn, rocky soil. John and Claire Lucas left Milwaukee to live on a farm in Olina, lured by cheap prices and the prospect of independence. John was a WWII vet with a taste for booze and a nasty temper; Claire was a young schoolteacher who gave up her career for marriage. But John was a poor farmer who gave himself more and more deeply over to drink, whereas Claire found the solitude of Olina (and life with John) oppressive. Claire took solace in her two sons, James and Bill, who protected her (physically as well as emotionally) from her husband's violent rages, but the boys themselves had to look beyond home for their own peace. James, tragically, enlisted in the Marines in 1967, partly to escape from his troubled family and partly to show up his father (who had lied about his WWII combat record), while Bill spent more and more with Ernie and Rosemary Morriseau, a childless couple who lived on a neighboring farm. After James is killed in Vietnam, Bill tries to protect Claire from John--and suffers terrible abuse at his hands. In spite of this, Bill manages to grow up relatively happy and well-adjusted, and eventually marries his college sweetheart and finds work as a biologist, but he is unable to have children because of the injuries his father inflicted on him. His wife wants to adopt, but Bill fears the consequences of family life. Can Bill understand he is not his father? Can he forgive the man who nearly ruined his life? Elegantly written and sharply observed, but sensitive to a fault: a well-crafted debut that suffers from a bit too much feeling. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
In this first novel from Wisconsin writer Ellis, Jimmy and Bill Lucas struggle in the shadow of their alcoholic father. Jimmy reacts by enlisting in the Vietnam War (where he dies), while young Bill and his mother are left behind to suffer the patriarch's abuse. The only haven Bill has is a kindly (and, coincidentally, childless) couple who lives next door. As the years pass, his father dies, but Bill begins to fall into the old man's destructive habits. Ellis relies on rumination and flashbacks from the various participants, resulting in all-too-familiar material. There's not much for the characters to do but muddle through their misery while the novel slowly coasts to its happy-ending halt; even Mr. Lucas, the "heavy" of the novel, is rather underdrawn. Some authors navigate this emotional inertness well (Russell Banks and Frederick Busch come to mind), but readers may find that this story requires a bit more plot movement to succeed. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/03.]-Marc Kloszewski, Indiana Free Lib., PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
October 2000 HE STOOD NEXT TO HIS yard light and looked at his watch. It was 8:00 P.M., and he did not want to wait a moment longer, to cause them worry. He turned the light switch on and then off, waiting for a few seconds before doing it again: on and off. It was a signal to his younger neighbor that all was well at the Morriseau farm. A nightly ritual. It was dark and cold, but rather than go into the house, he leaned against the light post. Autumn again. It was the season in which the memories of his father were most visceral. His father had been dead for fifty years. Ernie was now seventy-six. Autumn made him more aware of his mortality, yet his chest swelled with excitement, with the change arousing his senses. The spice and funk of wet bark and wet leaves, the papery fertility of dried grass and the astringency of pine. The leaves like varying shades of fire. The first October storm that released them like smoke. The surprising loveliness of bare branches reaching upward as though the sky had pulled their shirts off to get them ready for bed. Autumn briefly transcended the truth of his age and allowed him to dwell in the memory of being a treasured late-in-life child. He had loved and respected his mother and father; had been the child of, and witness to, an extraordinary marriage. In trying to be what he thought was a good son, a citizen of the world, he had made choices that hurt his parents and caused them worry and pain, some of them inevitable but others selfishly ill considered. He hadn't paid attention. He only half listened in the evenings when his father told stories and anecdotes while they did chores. Stories of his father's life on the reservation, stories of why the moon was full once a month, why birds go south, the creation of butterflies. He understood and listened to his parents speak in what should have been his first language, Ojibwe. Ernie knew only a half dozen words, as his generation was not allowed to speak their native language in school. If he had listened more closely and learned, he might have solved the riddle that his father unwittingly left him with and that troubled him for years. They had been deer hunting that day and had stopped to drink some water and eat their packed sandwiches. "Spring," his father commented out of the blue, looking up at the treetops, "is the season of women and birth. Fall is the season of men and hunting." Ernie was sixteen then and did not think to question its meaning, but it was odd enough for him to remember. His father suffered a stroke two weeks after Ernie came home from fighting in the Pacific in 1944. Ernie had gotten married just before returning to Olina. Rather than have a honeymoon, he and his wife were suddenly faced with the responsibility of his family's subsistence farm and the care of his aging parents as well. In those long days of work there never seemed to be time to discuss much of anything except what was necessary. He was hesitant to do so anyway; afraid that he might upset the old man by forcing him to speak when it was so difficult for his father to ask for the simplest needs and wants. His wife's nursing of his father and her patience with the daily physical therapy required appeared to have nearly restored him. Just when it seemed his father had regained all of his speech and could walk without help, he suffered a fatal stroke one night in his sleep. Ernie told his mother, not long before she died two years later, what his father had said, in the hopes that she would know the intent of the words. Her usually good-humored face folded in confusion. "I don't know." She shook her head. "I don't know what he meant." He would have given anything to talk to his father again. To ask the older man if he had really understood what he had said: that women belonged to life and that men belonged to death and that men killed in the fall what women gave birth to in the spring. Even if it was not literally true, the metaphor was a terrifying one. He put his bare hands in his coat pockets and looked up at the night sky with its many stars and constellations. He shivered. Peace did not come with old age. The new millennium meant nothing to him. He and his wife had gone to bed early on New Year's Eve, ignoring the national fear of being bombed, of terrorism striking anywhere and everywhere. They did not, as some of their neighbors did, buy cases of water, load up on canned goods, buy huge power generators, or turn their basement into a bunker. They slept, knowing that whatever would happen would happen regardless of what they did. His right hand fingered the handkerchief in his pocket. If he had learned something profound in his life, it was this: that to ask a question could be the most rebellious of acts and the most necessary. That allowing words to go unspoken could cause not only harm to oneself but harm to another. He tasted it every day in his mouth. As though he had bitten down on a prickly ash berry. The sudden infusion of wild citrus flavor before it numbed his gums and tongue. Not even water seemed to wash it away. Bitterness. Excerpted from The Turtle Warrior by Mary Ellis All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.