By Way of Water

By Charlotte Gullick

Book Overview

Struggling to feed their children in an unforgiving California forest when all the logging jobs are gone, Jake and Dale Colby make personal vows that can only make matters worse. Jake will not accept help-from the government or his neighbors-and Dale won't allow him to hunt. She believes her faith will sustain them. He believes in nothing. But one other member of the family makes a promise to herself. Seven-year-old Justy believes that she alone can hold the family together, even when Jake's violence surfaces again. Narrated by this gentle, even wise young girl, this moving story reveals a family's most volatile emotions and private aspirations, like old-growth trees through an inland fog. With a clear insight and the deepest empathy, young Justy isolates the stark realities around her, even as she dreams with her mother of a safe world that only God can promise. By the final pages of Charlotte Gullick's powerful debut novel, we discover-along with Justy-how to heal the lesions that appear when obligation is delivered against human nature.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0399148981
• ISBN13: 9780399148989
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: Blue Hen
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.6" x 1.0" x 5.7"
• Age Range: 14 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8

Customer Reviews

Rural upbringing

This author's voice reverberates my upbringing in Northern California. I too have witnessed a drastic shift in the ways families make ends meet. For anyone who wants to know what it is like to grow up in rural northern California, where logging was once the major source of income, this is the book. The emotional journey is so intense I couldn't put it down.

insightful look at the late seventies

In 1977 in the mountainous backwoods of Northern California, logger Jake Colby is struggling to feed his wife and three children as he is out of work especially since a mining company has bought the rights to the area. Independent, Jake rejects any government assistance. Instead he is willing to poach though it is against the law, but his wife Dale, a devout Jehovah Witness, feels he will be breaking more than just man's law.However, starvation of her children leads to Dale encouraging Jake to shoot a deer. Meanwhile their youngest child seven-year-old Justy fears her family is falling apart. Reared in faith, she takes a vow of silence until her dad can obtain permanent work rather than the occasional grave digging odd jobs he performs. As transplanted urban hippies rally against the mining interests, the Colbys worry more about their next meal than stripping the environment.BY WAY OF WATER is an insightful look at the late seventies in a remote area of the country. Through the Colbys and other residents, readers observe a world where the environmental and industrial interests fostered by governmental self-promotion lose sight of a tree in their dispute over the forest while long time locals just struggle to obtain sustenance. The characters make the story line work with their slowly simmering dreams of a better world though Justy at times seems like the most adult person in the novel. Though no Steinbeck, the great author must be proudly looking down at Charlotte Gullick for providing a strong character study that brings the area vividly alive to the audience.Harriet Klausner

A Must read!

To try and do this book justice...Gullick's writing on difficult issues such as violence, poverty, and how children process these things in their lives goes beyond comprehensive. She creates vivid pictures for the reader with her eloquent words and descriptions. There are scenes in this book that will never leave you. I read this book cover to cover, unable to tear myself away from the gripping story of Justy and her family. The depth of characters allows the reader to fully appreciate the challenges and emotions that are so strong throughout the book. Watch out Steinbeck!