The Road from Gap Creek by Robert Morgan

The Road from Gap Creek by Robert Morgan continues the saga of the Richards family from his earlier book, Gap Creek. I thought I remembered Gap Creek from when I read it years ago, but it took a couple of chapters for me to relate these characters to those characters, in a good way. Richards gives the youngest daughter a voice in The Road from Gap Creek. In doing so, he reminds the reader that stories have multiple storytellers because each person living the story, lives their own version. Morgan writes from the point of view of a character whose grammar often left me wanting to grab a red pen and edit her, but the imperfect grammar is important here to distinguish the character, to make her more real, to set her in her times. The characters pulled me toward my roots, toward my self, toward a deeper understanding of my grandparents. The German Shepherd in the story had me in tears as I remembered times with my Border Collie growing up. This family felt like family. They felt like people I grew up with. They felt like people... real people, not characters. Morgan created a world filled with characters I genuinely empathized with and cared about.

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