Book Review: The Ever-After Bird

Quickies
4 out of 5
Recommended for: Y/A Fiction
Categories: historical fiction/easy reads

Synopsis
(amazon.com)

Now that her father is dead, CeCe McGill is left to wonder why he risked his life for the ragged slaves who came to their door in the dead of night. When her uncle, an ornithologist, insists she accompany him to Georgia on an expedition in search of the rare scarlet ibis, CeCe is surprised to learn there's a second reason for their journey: Along the way, Uncle Alex secretly points slaves north in the direction of the Underground Railroad.

    

Set against the backdrop of the tumultuous pre-Civil War South, The Ever-After Bird is the story of a young woman's education about the horrors of slavery and the realization about the kind of person she wants to become.

Review

I love Ann Rinaldi. I have ever since I picked up The Staircase at the library when I was a young teen. I've made it a point to own nearly every book she's written. I've recommended her work to nearly all my friends. I've followed her heroines from the Civil War to modern day to the Revolutionary War to Mexico to the Salem Witch Trials to 17th century England and back again and enjoyed nearly every ride. She's that good.

But when I picked up The Ever-After Bird I wasn't so sure I would like it. With the past few books I've read by her, I've been slightly disappointed. I don't know if that's due to the fact that I'm growing up and her writing style {which is still fresh and excellent in the worst of times} hasn't or if she just lost her touch for a few books {understandable; she's written at least thirty} and I happened to read them all in a row. However, my sister mentioned that she had liked it, so I thought I'd give it a try. 

Plot

It has become clear that Ann's best relationships are older male mentor to a young {usually early teen} girl - either a sister or a ward. She's a past master at creating literary crushes {I find one in nearly every book} and her writing just can't be matched. She's SO creative with her words, her dialogue is never dull, her plots are solid, her premises intriguing, her research exhaustive. 

Thus she creates CeCe. 

{I'm not going to recreate the synopsis, so you'll just have to go back and read it if you're anything like me and just skimmed or skipped it}

To be honest, I didn't really notice the plot. It escalated gradually and came to a quiet climax. What was important was each little domino that fell in turn. Something like slavery, with all the stories and horrors, is hard to portray. It's really impossible to comprehend cruelty unless you are either present for it or experience it yourself. CeCe portrays this well - the confusion over her feelings about slavery and the slow horror she develops as she witnesses its reality. {In the author's note, Ann Rinaldi discloses that most of the things she has CeCe witness were actual documented happenings and that she even toned some of them down for her narrative}

Really, the plot is an even pattern of traveling, stopping at a plantation, unpleasant experience, more traveling, find something along the road, stop at another plantation, another unpleasant learning experience, Earline causes some sort of trouble, back on the road again, ect. Uncle Alex's ornithology and his warnings of the slaves aren't what's important here. However, it is interesting to see how each plantation operates and how each individual owner's view of their property is reflected in the treatment of their slaves.

There are a few slightly mature moments and conversations since CeCe is a growing girl who can't keep her mouth shut and Uncle Alex is a doctor and somehow it's common for them to discuss things that might make some girls uncomfortable to read. 

Overall, it had a promising start, but unraveled near the end into a rather anticlimactic finish. 


Characters
CeCe McGill 
CeCe is a delightfully and also frustratingly obnoxious Rinaldi heroine. She's very typical of the author in being headstrong, plain-spoken, stubborn and tending to idolize the male who has her charge. Not everything she does makes sense {which I think is more a weakness of plot than a weakness of character} but her heart is usually in the right place even if she does disobey her uncle at nearly every turn.
I found her observations about slavery to be very sound and interesting. Her thoughts on anything else were generally less sound and she had an annoying tendency to be very appropriately immature. However, her confusion over her own treatment and views of slaves were honest and thought-provoking. Forced by her circumstances to act as if she agreed with slavery and also to treat the slaves around her - Earline included - in keeping with those views, she grappled convincingly with the consequences of such power.

Uncle Alex
Rinaldi literary crush extraordinaire. Much less realistic than the Rinaldi heroes of yore, he comes off way to strong in the romantic category. 
The man can do no wrong. There is nothing wrong with him. He's the perfect mixture of handsome, strength, vulnerability, rightness, wrongness and excels at nearly every activity known to man.
 I didn't buy it this time.
However, his back story IS intriguing {wish there was more of it} and he does have a very good tongue in his head when it comes to interesting dialogue. 
He treats CeCe a little more leniently than is good for her {she could do, on several occasions, with a darn good spanking} and I'm not sure why he has no control whatsoever over Earline when she appears to worship the ground he walks on. 

Earline
Incredibly confusing. She was a former slave with an extraordinarily complex history. CeCe often complains of not being able to understand a thing she does, and I am in wholehearted agreement. I can't decide if she was really complex or if she was just allowed to do anything and everything she wanted because the author needed a little action in the plot. She seems like the type of character who would be difficult to control. 
Earline does, actually, provide nearly all of the action with her independent defiance of the boundaries between slaves and whites. She's the one who CeCe first must treat as a slave {a difficult feat after how she treats CeCe in Ohio where she's free}. She's the one who goes on and falls in love with a white man in the middle of the Deep South. She's the one who stubbornly does exactly what she's been told not to do and she's also the one who pays the steepest price {even though CeCe makes a solid second} when the climax eventually rolls around. 

Conclusion
This isn't Elsie Dinsmore or Anne of Green Gables. Rinaldi's characters are usually pretty gritty and defiant. They're not obedient, quiet or sweet. Thus there is some language, a lot of disobedience and gobs of literary crushes. But there's also solid history, real-life issues, realistic characters and a refreshing lack of picture-perfect scenarios. 

It's life - with a lot of great dialogue thrown in.  
  
Till next time!