cover image Listen for Rachel

Listen for Rachel

Lou Kassem, Kassem. Margaret K. McElderry Books, $13.95 (164pp) ISBN 978-0-689-50396-2

Set in Tennessee before and during the Civil War, this historical novel is an absorbing, old-fashioned romance. Its heroine, Rachel, an orphan at age 14, has left the city to join her extended family in the Appalachian Mountains. Though welcomed there by her spirited and self-sufficient grandparents, Rachel chafes at traditional ""hope chest'' parties and wonders if she, like other mountain women, will one day be expected to ``follow the man.'' As the war years pass, she studies mountain medicine with her neighbor, Granny Sharp, tending the pregnant and the sick by riding her horse to their scattered homes. Finally, she falls in love with a soldier, a Yankee who returns to her, her people and the land at the end of the war. This satisfying conclusion to Rachel's story has the overtones of a beginning, and suggests a worthwhile sequel. (12-up)