Wish You Well is a silly, sappy book about the mountains of Virginia
Wish You Well by David Baldacci
Wish You Well by David Baldacci reads like a bad romance novel without the romance. Well, you get a little taste of romance when the local lawyer stoically visits the catatonic mother and reads to her and then marries the poor woman when she snaps out of her mental illness in time to save the farm. This love plot isn't really central to the story. It's just tossed in there for no apparent reason other than to support a sappy happily-ever-after ending to the story.
The story revolves around two children — Louisa Mae (Lou) age 12 and brother Oz age 7. They are left, for all practical purposes, orphans when their father dies in a car wreck and the mother slips into zombie mode. These 1940 New York City kids and the ghost of a momma travel by train to the hills of Virginia to join grandmother, Louisa (Lou's namesake). The story is about adjusting to new circumstances. It could be seen as a "coming of age" story, but Lou sounds like a middle-aged woman from the start and Oz doesn't have any personality to speak of.
Lou is smarter than the rest of the characters in this story and especially runs circles around the women presented. She never much liked her mother and blames her for the car wreck. The mother was nagging and distracted the father who then wrecked and died. Lou hates the nurse that travels with the kids and poor old momma to Virginia. The nurse is bossy and not too bright. The same goes for the teacher at the one-room school house. In fact, the only intelligent woman in the book besides Lou is grandmother Louisa.
Oz, bless his little heart, is about as interesting as yesterday's newspaper. He's just a sappy sweet little boy who does his sister's biddings. He would make a great puppy. He follows his sister around, and then she follows him around. I guess the reader is supposed to find him endearing and Lou's protectiveness admirable. It doesn't work.
Grandmother, Louisa, must train these two city kids to work the land, or they will not eat. She is dirt poor as are most mountain people in this book. But, she's smart. You wouldn't know it by the way she talks. She apparently does not know how to use subjects in sentences ("Wasn't much of a fight," "Work his children like mules and treats his mules better'n his children," "Say they charge a dollar.") Almost all her sentences begin with verbs. If she doesn't start with a verb, she still mangles the language. Here is a sample:
"Can't sell it, Cotton. When time comes, it'll go to Lou and Oz. Their daddy loved this place as much as me. And Eugene too. He my family. He work hard. He getting some of this land so's he can have his own place, raise his own family. Only fair."
In this passage, she's talking about the coal companies coming in and buying up the mountain land. This is something that happened in the mountains and during the era covered in the story. The second half of the book deals with a trial concerning the land. Cotton is the lawyer that I mentioned had been reading to poor sick momma. Eugene is the black hired hand who was raised by Louisa and stands to inherit some of the family land. Both men are good and noble and rather dull. They play side roles and simply support the women characters in the story. They need "somebodies" to talk to, and they don't seem to like other women very much.
The only other notable character in the book is Diamond. He's an orphan boy who is rough and tumble and helps Lou and Oz get into some typical mountain scrapes. These are all skinnydipping kind of mountain doings that you see in almost every book written about mountain kids. Think of him as the "country cousin." Lou and Oz are really impressed that he does not wear shoes "unless the snow is ten feet deep." Diamond is just so cool until he dies.
Baldacci is known for writing legal thrillers, and he needs to stick to his genre. The only semi-interesting sections in Wish You Well were the court scenes concerning the legal battle for the mountain land.
In the "Author's Note," Baldacci notes that his family hailed from the mountains of Virginia. His mother and grandmother shared stories from the hills when he was a kid. He wanted to capture the flavor of the mountains in this book dedicated to his mother, but he failed miserably.
My family comes from the mountains of Virginia, and Wish You Well does not come close to capturing the people or the place. Everyone in the book is either good or bad and no in between. They all sound alike and stupid. I didn't warm up to any of the characters, and I didn't care that everything worked out "happily ever after." I was glad the book was over, and I don't plan to read anything else written by Baldacci.
