Cold Rock River

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Author(s):

J. L. Miles

Label: Cumberland House Publishing
Publisher(s):

Cumberland House Publishing

Studio: Cumberland House Publishing
Manufacturer: Cumberland House Publishing
Binding: Hardcover
List Price: $22.95
Our Price: $15.61
Availability: Usually ships in 12 to 13 days

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

In 1963 rural Georgia, with the Vietnam War cranking up, pregnant seventeen-year-old Adie Jenkins discovers the diary of pregnant seventeen-year-old Tempe Jordan, a slave girl, begun as the Civil War was winding down. Adie is haunted by the memory of her dead sister; Tempe is overcome with grief over the sale of her three children sired by her master.
Adie?married to Buck, her baby's skirt-chasing father?is unprepared for marriage and motherhood. She spends her days with her new baby, Grace Annie. Buck spends his with the conniving daughter of the man he works for. Adie welcomes the friendship of midwife Willa Mae Satterfield. Having grown close to her after Grace Annie's birth, Adie confides that her baby sister, Annie, survived choking on a jelly bean only to drown in Cold Rock River a few months later. Willa Mae replies, "My two little chillins Georgia and Calvin drowns in that river, too." What she won't say is how and why.
Adie takes refuge in Tempe's journal. It tells an amazing tale, but the further she reads, the more questions the diary raises in her mind. After "the freedom" comes, Tempe sets out to find her lost children and meets Tom Barber, another freed slave. Tom and Tempe marry and have one daughter, Heart. When Tom is killed in a drunken brawl, Tempe takes Heart and settles on a small patch of land in North Georgia.
There, Heart blossoms, eventually marrying and giving birth to Georgia and Calvin. Adie is filled with questions: Could Willa Mae be Heart? How?and why?did the children die? And is it possible that the man who now owns the house in which she lives is Willa Mae's grandson?
As Cold Rock River rushes to its surprising, shocking ending, questions of family, race, love, loss, and longing are loosed from the mysterious secrets that have been kept for too long. And the depth of the connection between the two women united by place and separated by race?and a century?is revealed.

Customer Reviews

Cold Rock River Smooths the Rough Edges

J.L. Miles' Cold Rock River: A Novel flows in and out of the past and present of Adie Thacker's life and occasionally transports the reader into the thicket of plantations and slavery near the time of the Civil War. The reader travels along the current of Cold Rock River and hits some brisk rapids and undercurrents, following Adie on her journey.

When Adie is a child, her family is the picture of happiness, minus the normal angst among siblings and boy troubles. However, one day their family changes irrevocably. Her father drinks himself into a stupor, while her mother withdraws from her children and her husband. Rebecca, Adie's older sister, falls in love, becomes a mother, and moves out on her own. Clarissa, Rebecca's twin, is the sweetest of the sisters and wallows in food to shut out the pain. Although this story is about her family and how it evolves after a significant loss, the novel also is about family secrets and how those secrets eat up Adie and the family.

This beautiful image in Chapter Seventeen, page 162, holds a vast symbolic meaning in relation to this family's struggles and its one of my favorites:

Hog Gap and Cold Rock still had the mountain between them with no road cutting through. The only way to get from one spot to the other was to take the two-lane highway that ran around it. In the distance, Cold Rock Mountain rested like a fat king on his throne. The sides sparkled like jewels as the sun bounced off chunks of granite embedded along the edges.

Another of my favorite passages in this book is in Chapter Three, on page 33-34, shortly after Adie's mother becomes infatuated with Jackie Kennedy and her husband:

Mama was especially crazy about the pillbox hats Jackie wore. "Not every woman can wear them, you know," she said. "Takes a certain bone structure." Whatever type that was, Mama figured she had it. Every one of the dresses she made had its own matching pillbox hat, but they didn't look much like Jackie's. Mama used Pa's baseball caps as a base. She cut the bills off and covered what was left in whatever fabric she was working on at the time.

Adie is a bit tough to take at first with her disjointed narrative, but eventually her ramblings endear her to the reader. She struggles as a new wife and mother, particularly when she realizes her husband, Buck, is not as in love with her as she is with him and that his mother, Verna, has secrets of her own and hopes Adie will fail.

Miles easily weaves in the slave narrative of Tempe Jordan into Adie's story. Although these stories parallel one another in some ways, the stories shed light on the strength these women share. This is one of those novels that will stay with the reader once the last page is read, and it is now one of my top 5 books from this year.

Great quick read!

This is by far one of the best books I've read in a long time! I couldn't put it down!

Amazing - I cannot recommend this enough!

First of all, I just have to start off by saying what a huge impact this book made upon me. There are tons of books that I can honestly and wholeheartedly say that I love. However, there are only a select few that I can say leave a lasting effect, long after the final page has been turned. Cold Rock River is among those select few.

Jackie Lee Miles has a distinct talent of weaving the reader right in with the characters of the story. Cold Rock River is comprised of two touching stories, interwoven together. First there is the main character, Adie, who has lost a beloved baby sister, grown up knowing a tragic secret, gets married, has a baby and all before the age of seventeen. Her husband is having an affair and often times Adie feels isolated. However, she has befriended an elderly woman, Willa Mae Satterfield and it is through her that Adie discovers the diary of Tempe Jordan, a seventeen-year-old slave girl. After this, Adie's life is forever changed.

Cold Rock River is the story of both Adie and Tempe. The chapters are set up to smoothly transition between each time frame, leaving the reader anxious to see what will happen next with each girl. Tempe's story takes place during the close of the Civil War, while Adie's is more of the present day. Each girl has a very different life, however they both must reach within and find an inner strength to endure.

The author's characterization and story descriptions are amazingly vivid and bring the book to life. I was drawn to, and felt an enormous affection for, both Adie and Tempe - as well as many of the secondary characters - Willa Mae, Margaret Mary and Murphy. Though Cold Rock River is a story of strength of endurance, there is a bit of a mystery to the entire thing - a mystery that will not let itself known until the very end, changing several people's lives forever.

I cannot express enough how much I loved Cold Rock River. Once I started reading, it was torment to have to stop, for any reason - and made coming back to it absolutely wonderful. I wanted to mention, also, that for me there is something intriguing to the cover. I can't say exactly what it is, but it seems like a portrayal of lone fragility. It is a cover which drew me in, even before the words of the story engulfed me.

Cold Rock River has easily made my favorites of 2008 list, as well as all time favorite books. This was the first work by Jackie Lee Miles that I have had the pleasure to experience, however I anxiously await getting my hands on more by her!

Again, I give Cold Rock River my highest recommendation and know that once you start reading, you won't want to stop!

Beautiful story; but has a FATAL flaw

Having read the raving customer reviews, I bought this book and found it enchanting. I loved the story and I thought the writing style was unique and made it even more memorable. But I feel compelled to point out a fatal flaw with the storyline. Near the end of the novel, the main character comes to the end of Tempe's journal and is crushed to find that pages have been torn out. The diary describes the rape of Heart, the birth of Rachel and ends with the words "Rachel married to dat nice young man what owns all the land be's round here, and she be's ready to hab dat li'l baby she gwine hab and den one" ... and that is the end of the Tempe's journal. (This passage is near the end of Chapter 38.)

In Chapter 39, the protagonist learns that Rachel died clutching the pages that had been torn out of the diary and her husband burns the pages. How could Rachel die holding the pages that were written about her own death?

Honestly, this ruined the story for me. I felt so let down that I couldn't feel the characters anymore... they just became 2-dimensional cartoons that I no longer cared about. The inconsistency killed the ending for me.

Couldn't put it down

One of the best novels I have read in quite some time --- rates right up there with "The Glass Castle."
The dialect did not bother me -- just relax and let it flow. The story draws you in immediately and doesn't let go.

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