Elizabeth Crook, Sharon Creech, and Ann Patchett

I’ve been out this morning watching the deer watch me. At about 6 a.m., I made my coffee and took it outside to go on a stroll around the premises with our cats. The early morning on our farm/ranch is perfect these summer days, and I can’t help but admire God’s lovely handiwork. We had abundant rains this spring and lower than usual temperatures, so our tanks (a.k.a. ponds) are full, the grass is lush, cows are fat, and the wildlife content. We are feeling blessed. Hotter temperatures are coming, almost certainly, but for now, we’ve only had a couple of days of 100 degrees so far and yesterday was 95ish. Mornings are cool and green.

Instead of writing, I’ve been painting our outdoor furniture. I have a penchant for benches and tables and chairs and rockers and…you get the picture. The problem is Texas weather takes its toll, and so in the spring or early summer, I paint. Perhaps, I’ll get the furniture all finished before summer is over. If not, fall is a better time for sitting outside here anyway.

I suppose I’ve needed an excuse to get out of my office. I have been holed-up in there for months reworking manuscripts, writing new ones, and working on classroom guides for my published books. I need to start querying agents and publishers, get back to promoting my “Ranch Girl” books, clean the house, do more laundry, and write some other things I have ideas for. And I will. Soon. As for writing, I never feel my work is ready, and so I hesitate to send it out.

In the meantime, I’ve finished reading Elizabeth Crook’s The Which Way Tree and the 1997 Newbery Award book Walk Two Moons. These two books as well as Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House that I wrote about in my last blog, have one large thing in common although they are exceedingly different books. I’ll come to that later. I have been choosing books to read for no particular reason other than I think I might like them. Well, that and I want to read more past Newbery Award Books and “Texas” books.  The Dutch House is neither. The truth is that I have piles of books I’m trying to get to.

The Which Way Tree by Elizabeth Crook takes place just after the Civil War in the Hill Country of Texas. Written as a series of letters, it is the testimony of Benjamin Shreve, seventeen years old, concerning what he had witnessed three years earlier—the bodies of eight murdered men. Benjamin’s letters develop into the story of his life and that of his half-sister Samantha who each lost their mothers and then their father. Benjamin’s mother died in childbirth and a few years later, Samantha’s mother was killed while trying to protect her daughter from a panther. This tragedy consumes the life of his revenge-seeking sister and, by extension, leads to her and Benjamin’s wild and difficult life. Here is my brief review of The Which Way Tree on Goodreads:

Ferguson’s Reviews > The Which Way Tree

The Which Way Tree
by Elizabeth Crook (Goodreads Author)

Brenda Ethridge Ferguson‘s review

Jun 17, 2025

really liked it

In the period just after the American Civil War, two young, Texas half-siblings struggle to survive after a panther kills their mother, and their father dies. Told by the older brother in a series of letters, this is a gritty tale of the girl’s obsessive need for revenge against a killer panther, a brother’s exasperation in regard to his sister, and his desire to do right by her. The brother has knowledge of a murder and the story narrative develops through the boy’s letters to the judge hearing the murder case. The tale has a sense of the mystical, the desperate, and sometimes the futile. I found the novel to be well written and layered, but often saw the girl’s wild, thoughtless, exasperating stubbornness a bit tiring and overdrawn. Still, it is a thought-provoking story.

 In Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech, ten-year-old Salamanca Tree Hiddle has moved from Bybanks, Kentucky, to Euclid ,Ohio, a year after her mother left them. Helped by a woman named Margret, her dad has taken a new job and has left their more bucolic life in Kentucky behind. When her mother left for a trip through Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and on to Idaho, she and her father fully expected her to return. Instead she did not come home from Idaho.  Salamanca (Sal) has kept all the postcards her mother sent her.

In Ohio, Sal meets Phoebe, and it is Phoebe’s strange story Sal tells her grandparents when they take her on a long trip to Idaho to locate her mother. Phoebe’s story also deals with a missing mother to include a number of mysteries and the girl’s irrational fears that echo Sal’s own experiences. During the journey to Idaho, other stories emerge to include those of Sal’s mother and father, the story of her friend Mary Lou, the story of Ben (Sal’s first love interest) and his mother, and her grandparents’ story. These weave into a fine tapestry of experience before the novel’s poignant end. Here is my very brief review on Goodreads:

Brenda Ethridge Ferguson’s Reviews > Walk Two Moons: A Newbery Award Winner

Walk Two Moons: A Newbery Award Winner (Walk Two Moons, 1)
by Sharon Creech

Brenda Ethridge Ferguson‘s review

Jun 28, 2025  · 

really liked it

bookshelves: newbery-medal-books

This story within a story (within other stories) involves missing mothers, family losses, fear, and numerous relationships. Salamanca Tree Hiddle’s mother has gone away, leaving her husband and daughter searching for ways to cope. Salamanca’s (Sal’s) journey involves moving, becoming involved in the lives of new friends, and telling her grandparents the tale of a new, fearful friend whose mother has recently left her. The middle-grade novel is engrossing in its mother-missing narratives but does, at times, stretch credulity. All the same, its themes dealing with the devastating impact of a mother’s loss on children as well as themes of endurance and hope are richly interwoven throughout. I really liked this somewhat strange novel.

Now the point I want to make about the one large thing these two novels and the Ann Patchett novel I wrote about in my last blog have in common is what? They all three have quite different settings and plots and endings, but the element that is identical, it seems to me, is the early childhood loss of a mother. In all three instances, the mothers left their children (not necessarily on purpose), but in all circumstances the effects on the children were devastating. The themes of abandonment and the crucial need for maternal connection thread their way throughout all three novels.  I knew little to nothing about these three novels before I began them and was surprised by this linkage. Of course, these are not unusual themes.

Check out my Goodreads Author Profile below and follow:

Brenda Ethridge Ferguson (Author of Ranch Girl and the Orphan Lamb Adventure) | Goodreads

Thanks.