To
paraphrase Leo Tolstoy, great literature grows from two stories: someone goes
on a journey or a stranger comes to town. In Melinda Field’s first novel True, the character of young Cat sets
events in motion--she is both on a journey and the stranger who comes to town.
Abandoned by
her Mexican father, Cat has been raised by a drug-addicted mother and grown up
tough in the streets of Phoenix, AZ. When her mother is taken to prison, Cat is
forced to move to a small town and live with her Native American grandmother, a
woman she has never met. To further complicate matters, the town is an isolated,
predominantly white, ranching community in Northern California.
For Cat,
this is a coming-of-age story. The brutality she encounters and the
consequences will mark her life forever. But the novel True is much more.
The ensemble
cast of characters, a diverse group of women brought together by their love of
horses and their shared adventures in the mountains, is focused through Emma, a
midwife who ultimately becomes Cat’s guardian. Each woman faces life-changing challenges,
so that in True, Field reveals how we are always coming-of-age
no matter where we find ourselves.
True is set in the contemporary west and Field
evokes a palpable sense of place. From
the dusty heat of a Phoenix motel, redolent of curry and disinfectant--to the
cider scent of an orchard, the crunch of apples underfoot—to the sharp-scented sage and
dangerous shale of a mountain trail, the salt and blood of fear when a
rattlesnake or mountain lion appears—True
will transport readers from their easy chairs to a wild and authentic place.
There’s
still a month of summer left. If you’re looking for a book to take with you to
the beach or a book that is a vacation in itself, I invite you to read True.
