AND CONDORS DANCED

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Summary: DANCES WITH CONDORS AND pA ZEST FOR LIFE!
Review: Set in agricultural Ventura Valley of California in 1910, this story is difficult to classify. The young heroine reveals a wacky imagination, spunky atittude and distinctly tomboyish taste. These all provide amusing moments for the reader, but this book discusses many serious themes and topics: rabies, prolonged grieving, social cruelty, drought-induced poverty, and unrealistic expectations to fit into the family mold.

July 4th is the holiday spotlighted in this story of almost one year in the life of a child, who starts out by trying to become Invisible! I was hooked by the cover which showed people in old-fashioned garb by a horse-drawn vehicle. But Carly's life is far from an agrarian idyll or even Waltonesque. I actually consider the cover misleading, because Carly is definitley NOT the dainty little lady in white ruffles descending from Aunt M.'s carriage. In fact she defies proper, female tradition on the sly by riding Astride horses when she can get away with it.

Her immediate, dysfunctional famliy seems to have no use for her: strict, repressive Father (failed teacher turned to failing dry farmer); invalid Mother (physically as well as emotionally, grieving over the death of her toddler son a decade ago): assorted older siblings with their own problems. Poor criticized Carly only feels at home with Aunt Mehitabel and her incorrigible Chinese servant, Woo-Ling, both of whom adore her.

But how do condors (dancing, gliding or dead) influence her life? Ostracized from the Water Company by a long-standing family feud, the Carltons must watch helplessly as their unirrigated ranch is slowly strangled. Then there are the boys in her life: one proves a true friend who teaches her about condors and joins her Sherlock Holmes detective games. The other is the spoiled grandson of her family's bitter enemy, who targets her for more than mere verbal abuse.

Between lowlife gossip, her distant mother, her authoritarian father and a threat to her beloved dog, Tiger, Carly comes of age at! ll. She shows a morbid taste for the cemetery, where lies the little brother she never knew, whose place she could never take--the only family member truly at peace. Even Carly begins to wonder just when her tears are flowing for real. She stubbornly insists that one day she Will see condors dancing up at Condor Spring. These maligned birds are like Carly--outwardly unattractive--but with hidden depths of grace and aerial beauty. If she can learn to appreciate Them, may not people come to love and accept Her, just as she is, instead of some idealized daughter? Don't let them quench your zest for life!