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Summary: This book (I think) is crucial to understanding death!
Review: When you are like me and have hardly have to put up with your family almost falling apart, this book brings you to reality. When you feel like there is nothing you can do but sit and die, this book brings you hope. Lou and Louisa's personalitys clash a little, but they are ok together. I think this book is a must read for all ages. I believe that Oz was just trying to bring good luck to his mother, not to be a bother and we need to understand things from a young child's point of view
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Summary: Wish You Well
Review: After a tragic car accident kills their father and leaves their mother in a comatose state, Lou and Oz Cardinal, are left in the care of their paternal great-grandmother, Louisa, in the back hills of Virginia. The young children's world changes dramatically as they are moved to a place they have never been, to live with a woman they have never before known. They are filled with doubt and fear of what will happen next. Will their mother ever recover? Will they find joy and happiness once again? Will they ever get over the tragedy of their beloved father's death?
This book was very descriptive and well-written. It captivated my attention from beginning to end. Although very tragic at times, it was punctuated with humor. Mr. Baldacci brought the characters to life and truly engaged my emotion. I would recommend this book to anyone.
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Summary: Beautifully written tale
Review: Baldacci's masterpiece, Wish You Well, is a beautifully written piece of literature. The way he wrote the book allows the reader to actually visualize what's going on and makes the reader come to care for the character's. It is totally not Baldacci's type of writing, the rest of his books are more action thrillers while this book is a more sad, tragic and heartfelt tale. I would highly recommend it to all my friends and I suggest you read it as well.
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Summary: Magnificent book
Review: What a wonderful book! I've read Baldacci's suspense books and like them too, but this was entirely different. The tone of it reminded me of To Kill a Mockingbird, probably my favorite book. I also live not far from the Virginia mountains and have a 92 year old family friend who thinks there is no greater place on earth. She and Louisa Mae Cardinal would get along well. If you want to read a heartwarming tale, you can't go wrong with this book.
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Summary: Rewarding read
Review: My sweetest memories of my childhood in southeast rural Virginia, are the echoes of my two grandmothers as they responded to my, and my siblings' requests to "tell us a story." In a soothing, gentle drawling speech that has all but disappeared in our age of uniform media-inspired pronunciation, they would tell short little tales and anecdotes about their childhoods, or about our parents when they were children. Entertained by the hour, we were then unaware that we were tapping into a link with our pasts, even less aware that we were learning the cycle of life: we, the children, would one day be the parents, and then the grandparents. Auditors, we were learning the stories to pass on, while creating new ones to add to the repertoire. To read David Baldacci's "Wish You Well" is to hear my grandmothers again. True, "Wish You Well" takes place on the mountainous side of the Old Dominion, not the flat side where I grew up, but the challenges were the same: people who depended on the land for survival were at the mercy of nature and, sometimes, at the mercy of interloping industry that offered long-term promises it could not fill. They came, they took, they left. Ultimately, however, this is a novel about love, relations, relationships and sacrifice. Through a set of disastrous circumstances, Lou and Oz and their comatose mother find themselves transported from 1940s Brooklyn to a mountain top in far southwestern Virginia where their great-grandmother, Louisa Mae Cardinal takes them into her simple home. Here, they meet Eugene, a young black man who lives in Louisa's house, Diamond, an orphan who lives in the woods and Cotton, a small-town lawyer who does not realize the extent of his ability to persuade. The younger Louisa Mae, who insists upon being called Lou is an aspiring writer (following her father's footsteps). She is the older and stronger of the two children and acts as surrogate mother to her younger brother, Oz (short for Oscar, though "The Wizard of Oz" and symbolism in it do come into the story). Baldacci acknowledges in the prefatory Author's Note that portions of this book are autobiographical, leaving us to wonder if he is Lou or in Oz, or perhaps both as personifications of different parts of his developed personality. It does not seem accidental, however, that the scrappy Lou, who gets into more than one fight with a bully, bear the name Louisa Mae -- that of another author who wrote transparently autobiographical fiction. Josphine March also preferred to be known by a one-syllable name. Baldacci writes directly and effectively, sometimes drawing us into scenes that are almost too painful to read. If you are wise, you will not read the last chapters in a public place as I did (on the stairmaster at the gym). As I finished, with tears streaming down my face, I glanced up to see the woman next to me staring with a look that clearly said, "If it's that painful to exercise, just stop." Rather than break the spell of "Wish You Well" I just smiled and did not bother with an explanation. In the Author's Note, Baldacci tells us that "writing this novel was "one of the most rewarding experiences of my life." Reading it was one of mine.
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Summary: Heartwarming, wonderful story!
Review: I loved this book! It was my first David Baldacci book to read, but I'll definitely be looking for more. The family connections and setting are special. I highly recommend this to anyone!
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Summary: A Great Story of Loss and Coming to Terms
Review: Louisa Mae Cardinal is the main character of this story. She is a precocious twelve-year-old girl living in the hectic New York City with her acclaimed but sadly underpaid writer father,loving mom, and younger brother Oz. Lou had no idea of her family's financial struggles. Instead, she idolizes her father and is in love with the art of writing. Then, in a single terrifying moment, Lou's world changes forever, and she and Oz are on a train rolling away from New York and down into the mountains of Virginia. There, Lou's mother will begin a long, slow struggle between life and death. And it is there that Lou and Oz will be raised by their remarkable great-grandmother, Louisa, Lou's namesake. A very good book and worthwhile reading.
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Summary: I like his other works better
Review: I have read all of David Baldacci's other novels, and I consider him one of my favorite authors. Wish You Well was my least favorite of his works. It reminded me of a novel you would have to read for 6th grade English class. It is not the least bit like his classics: Absolute Power, Total Control, The Winner, Saving Faith, The Simple Truth, etc.
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Summary: Cheap melo-drama at its worst
Review: I was born in the backwoods of West Virginia, and now live in Northern New Hampshire. What can I say, I am a hillbilly. I was excited upon recieving this book from a friend. A coming of age story from the mountains would be something that should hit close to home, but this book did nothing of the sort. Opening with a cliche argument should have been a sure fire tip to what lay ahead, but I chose to ignore it. As I read on I discovered the characters, they were typical, cliche, and dare I say...Boring. There was the smart, headsrtong, beautiful girl, her timid younger brother, the talented, not to mention dead father, the tortured mother, the strong, kindly, understanding great granmother, the opressed black man, the stubborn southern boy who loved the girl, the do good lawyer, and the evil industry. Surprise surprise, the book was as predictable and cliche as the characters. The plot at times became stagnant, and when it did move there was so little emotion in it, that looking back, I found myself utterly disgusted. The authors pathetic attempts at emotion came off as sappy and melo-dramatic, not to mention cliche. Nothing in the book was believable. People died yet left no effect on me as a reader. Great triumphs were acheived, but still i could not find a single spark of emotion. The charcters were so typecast, and the coming of age plot so poorly used that i could find no compassion for the characters, nor could I hate them. I felt blank in reading the book. The reason I gave the book 2 stars were the descriptions. If read alone, they brought me back to my home town, but when paired with the book were tedious and superflous. I skimmed through them only to find and emotionless formula plot. Nice try David, but I never enjoyed cheap medicore melo-drama. Better luck next time.
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Summary: the 1 star was a gift seeing as i couldn't give 0
Review: I have read some of Baldacci's other novels and found them quite enjoyable. Although he is a bit of a formula writer (I usually don't enjoy such works. Think Danielle Steel or Tom Clancy) I did find his work entertaining. In this novel, Wish You Well, he strays from the court room drama formula to the sappy coming of age formula. Sadly he is quite inept at spinning emotional webs and loses himself in long drown out descriptions, that instread of creating a sense of beauty, were skimmed over in search of an actual plot. Once the plot was found it became tepid and luke warm. Times of happiness stirred not a single thought, passages of humor were lost until in retrospect one could say "well that was a good attemt, I guess..., sadness became boring, and triumph became, well...sappy. all in all the predictable story may have come off as a little more emotional, but Baldacci was unable to carry the emotional plot. Not once did i laugh, nor did i cry, and never did this book stir me to think. I just read it, and at the end realized i had gathered nothing from the book except the affirmed knowledge that once a formula writer finds his niche, he should do the literary world a favor and not stray from his abilities.
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