I'm a sucker for a good cover, and the edition I have of this has one has allowed me to ignore this book on my shelves for far too long. I wasn't convinced of how much I would like it, but it totally surpassed my expectations. The book's got that rural American drawly writing style, with a lot of drama to boot.
A Gathering Light's main character is Mattie Gokey, a 16-year-old girl living on a farm with her family whose been forced into the role of matriarch after her mother died. There are her siblings to look after and endless farm work to do, but what Mattie really wants to do is go to school so that she can get the grades she needs to get into college. Interspersed with the chapters about her life at home are ones from the future where she's working at a hotel and trying to work out what happened to the girl who was murdered on hotel land.
I liked the slow style of this book. Mattie and her family are connected to the land and their rural community in such strong ways that it felt important that the pace of writing matched their pace of life. This isn't to say the book wasn't without tension: between the murder case, working out whether Mattie would be able to pursue her dreams, violence and sexual assault, there was a LOT going on. The book really looked at the idea of family duty vs the privilege of being able to go after what you really want, and this was so well done.
I gave the book 4 stars and would recommend it if you enjoyed things like Where the Crawdads Sing and The Color Purple.
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