1971 — In the tiny, backward town of Tulma, Tennessee, optimistic, bookish Caroline Carson unwittingly finds herself in the middle of a forbidden romance. Severely neglected by her family and forced to flee Tulma to protect her secrets, Caroline’s young life comes crashing down around her. She finds refuge in a new town, but the past always has a way of stretching around time and stirring up trouble.
When a new love comes into her life, she has to decide if she can give her heart to someone else, or if she will always be tied to someone she can’t have.The details described in this book may not be suitable for readers below the age of 18 as descriptions of rape, alcoholism, child neglect, and abuse are depicted.
Check out an excerpt from In the Fields…
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
*ARC Given to Blog For Honest Review*
4 “Caroline girl” “I can know in my knower” Kisses
My eyes are puffy and swollen. My heart is bruised and beaten, but happy. My brain is just frustrated and on the verge of a mental strike. In the Fields is my emotional crack. I love it when a book makes me ugly cry and OH BOY! did I ugly cry. Multiple times. And while it may hurt like a bitch, I love it when books do that to me. Aside from one key thing, this was a 5 star read for me.
Caroline Josephine Carson…she’s amazing. Like an angel sent from heaven, I swear. There isn’t a bad bone in this girl’s body and she consistently awed me with how awesome she was. She loves routines, flowers and her dog, Josh. She’s beautiful, smart, kind, strong, mature beyond her years, sweet, hard worker, and all this is no thanks to her parents or her upbringing. I guess if that’s the one thing she got screwed with it’s with a P.O.S. mom who…really isn’t a mom and an absentee drunk father. And unfortunately she falls in love with a boy she can never be with. Blame it on the time (1970’s), the place (the South) or just the ignorance of the human race…but a white girl is not supposed to love a black boy. But you can’t pick who you fall in love with and I don’t care if Isaiah is purple with green polk-a-dots that boy is fan-freakin-tastic and I love him!
‘I guess I can just pretend to be mysterious, when really I’m about as bold as a bowl of noodles.’
Isaiah Cornelius Washington…so brave, so strong, so sure. There’s so many things I want to say about Isaiah but words just fail me. He was kind of this strong, quite presence always in the back of my mind. He knows Caroline is it for him. She’s 15 and he’s 16…and it’s ‘young love’, plus the circumstances are against them from the start…but it doesn’t matter. Not to Isaiah. Isaiah and Caroline clearly do not have your typical high school romance…their love is hard and they fight for every brief moment of happiness they get. And they don’t get a lot. My heart ached for them, for every hardship they went through, every time they took one step forward and then five steps back. It was hard because they both loved each other so much and rather than working together to try and make it work, they were too busy worried about making it easier on the other person. Very heartbreaking when you think about it…so much wasted time.
‘She needs someone to love her and take care of her, and I’d like that person to be me. I know we would come against it – there would be hell to pay for us to really be together – but I can’t let her go. I love her too much.’
I mean the entire book isn’t about their relationship, it’s really Caroline’s story. All that she struggles with and O…M…G… she has some soul disintegrating struggles. Like…holy cow, I would have just laid down and died. But she doesn’t…she somehow finds the will to keep on going. It does help that through all of it she’s able to find some amazing people. Ruby…Brenda…Papa…Sadie…they’re all just exactly who she needed to be surrounded by…and they needed her just as much as she needed them. I got just as swept away in her relationships and connections with them as I did with her and Isaiah. She would not survived had those people not been in her life. She has more of a family in people she’s not even blood related to…it’s amazing. I loved that.
‘She’s been the only one in my world who completely sees past my skin. In a town like Tulma, a love like that is miraculous. And I just gave that away.’
So most of the book is told from Caroline’s POV but we do get a few odd chapters here and there from Isaiah’s POV. It’s nice, fills in some gaps and it was a little bit of a shock the first time, but more of a happy surprise. Having to go back to a time when racism is rampant was a little hard…I can’t lie, but I did relate to Caroline in that aspect because the way her family was, was/is the way my family is (and I don’t live in the ‘70’s! :-\ ) But it’s real and raw and maybe that’s what made it a little harder to swallow because you don’t want to think that what you’re reading is an actual reality. And if the whole racism thing wasn’t enough there are more tragic things that Caroline has to suffer through.
‘I look over at Isaiah and he leans forward, his elbows on his knees. I’ve never loved anyone or anything as much as I love him. I try to memorize the way he looks at me. The way his lips tilt up when they see me. The way his eyes crinkle when he laughs at something I say. The way his eyes turn a darker shade of beautiful when he cries. I will love him until the day I die. I know this.’
Alright…so I said there was one key thing that kept this from being a 5 star read for me. One word…one person really…Davis. I don’t do spoilers, but I will say while he is not in the book for very long, he is major…very important to Caroline and the way the whole story unfolds. But what happens at 80% Broke. My. Heart….and honestly, I felt like it was unnecessary. There were so many ways this could have gone and after I got over the heartbreak of all if it, I was angry. Almost irrationally angry because I felt like all of what I went through with them, was for nothing. Completely pointless. There were other ways to have addressed the situation…not that any of them wouldn’t have hurt or been difficult to get through, any way you slice it, it wasn’t going to be easy! But I don’t care…what happened was just…cruel and I don’t say this lightly, but the way it was taken, to me, was not the way to go. I guess that’s another reason why I am angry, because that is the only thing keeping me from giving it 5 stars and that suuuuuuuuuuuuuucks! 🙁
‘He leans down and kisses me, and every nook, chink, crack, fissure, cranny, fracture — crevice — that has been broken or dried up or closed off or frozen or dead…sparks back up in full, living, breathing color.
I’m awake and I’m never going to let go of this feeling again.’
All in all though, aside from that one aspect, everything else about this book is spot on. Willow Aster can freaking write a book…I fell in love with her style when I read True Love Story and this just solidified it for me. She can write about crickets and the orbit patterns of planets and I’m sure I’ll by just as hypnotized by it. She has the ability to pull emotion out of me, even when it’s painful and gut wrenching and I’m just sobbing for it to stop hurting. So, with that being said, don’t read this book if you want sunshine and roses and a happy story where everything is peachy keen – cause that’s not what this book is. It’s a struggle, it’s heartbreak, it’s loss, it’s pain, it hurts and then at the end it heals you and makes you all better. I loved the ending…it all comes full circle and it did soothe my heart just enough.
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Willow Aster is the author of True L̶o̶v̶e̶ Story and In the Fields, two standalone books published in 2013. When she’s not writing, you can find her staring out into space, dreaming about new characters. She also enjoys sliding across the hardwood floor in her socks and twirling in the sand.
wow! *deep breath* what a wonderful… amazing review! that’s all I can say after reading your review! JUST WOW! WONDERFUL AND AMAZING!
Wow…thank you so much! 🙂
What a fantastic review, I just finished the book and have to agree, it was a beautifully written story and told with such love.