Leaves on Frozen Ground

by Dave Carty

A small family living on the edge of the forest. They have an apple orchard, own a few rental properties and the father also works in construction. The kid loves to roam the woods alone- which his mother worries constantly about. The boy simply loves the outdoors and practicing survival skills his father taught him; when they get two border collies he joyfully goes out on long walks accompanied by one or both. I liked the depiction of the dogs- seemed very true to type. The lives of the couple- not so much. Lots of conversations about struggling finances and the economy, the mom's worries about her son and the father's dismissal of that. Their very different ways of seeing things. Eventually a few crises happen- problems at work, a bear in the apple orchard, the death of one dog- that slowly starts to unravel the family. Unfortunately I didn't care much about them as individual characters and I'm not interested in baseball, so the father and son passion for that did nothing for me. I got tired of mention of the wife's prettiness that turned the wrong heads, the husband's muscles and workouts. Every now and then there was a little detail that felt out of place and kinda knocked me out of the story. There is some lovely descriptive writing of the landscape and the weather, but somehow even the kid's forays into the woods left me uninterested. While the characters and situation felt very realistic, something about the narrative style just fell really flat for me. I knew something very sad or critical would happen to this family in the end, and it did. I read about their dissolution with the same detachment. Surprisingly, I liked the ending well enough- the few final pages had a very satisfying moment. But the way it was told- just not my type.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 2/5               225 pages, 2019