The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls

Anyone else fascinated by all the double letters in the name Jeannette Walls? Just me? Okay, then.

I read The Silver Star to fill a prompt for the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge (PSRC). I have been doing a lot of reading for PSRC because I fell behind at a certain point when I was just reading what I wanted to read all willy nilly. I'll do an update next month because we're at the halfway point of the year and see how things are going. 

I think Walls' (I have debated the possessive apostrophe for too long - grammar nerds, is this right?) most popular books are The Glass Castle and Half Broke Horses (they're both memoirs, I think, and I don't generally care for that), but I have read neither of them. I have only read Hang the Moon as a book club read and found it meh. But this one had an interesting premise and I liked the over (so shallow!), so I dove in.

Twelve-year-old Bean and her sister Liz live in a small California town with their mother in 1970. She abandons them and they take off on bus to go live with their uncle in Virginia. Their Uncle Tinsley is an eccentric man who lives in a moldering mansion still celebrating their family's grand past, including owing a plantation and a cotton mill. The girls find themselves attempting to fit into this new life. Bean has an easier time of it than Liz and soon Bean finds herself as the protector in a real role reversal. It's a coming of age story with lots to say about justice and fairness.

I thought this book had an excellent first 80 pages and then it just sort of tapered off into a less interesting take on Southern pride, politics, and justice. I wanted more about the sisters, their relationship, and Bean figuring out that her naivete was going to bring harm to them. Instead I got a weird history lesson that I didn't really need or want. 

It was readable and I was invested in Bean and Liz. But I wanted more, too. 3/5 stars

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Line of note:

Mom, who'd gone to antiwar rallies where protesters burned flags, had been telling us for years about everything wrong with America - the war, the pollution, the discrimination, the violence - but here were all these people, including Uncle Clarence, showing real pride in the flag and the country. Who was right? They both had their points. Were they both right? Was there such a thing as completely right and completely wrong? (page 86)

Things I looked up:

Gurdjieff (page 211) - George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (c. 1866–1877 – 29 October 1949) was a philosopher, mystic, spiritual teacher, composer, and movements teacher. 

Chincoteague Island (page 242) - Chincoteague is a town in Virginia. The town includes the whole of Chincoteague Island and an area of adjacent water. The population was 3,344 at the 2020 census. The town is a tourist gateway to the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge on adjacent Assateague Island, the location of a popular recreational beach and home of the Virginia herd of Chincoteague Ponies. These ponies and the annual Pony Swim are the subject of Marguerite Henry's 1947 children's book Misty of Chincoteague, which was made into the 1961 family film Misty, filmed on location.

Hat mentions (why hats?): 

There were people everywhere, wearing either crazy clothes - tuxedo jackets but no shirts, top hats with feathers - or hardly anything...(page 25)

He'd pick something up, say an ivory-handled letter opener or a tricornered hat, and give us a long explanation of where it came from, who had owned it, and why it had extraordinary significance. (page 40)

When he got to the middle of the intersection, he looked at us, smiled, and touched his hat. (page 43)

...but Uncle Tinsley showed up, wearing a gray felt hat and an old red-and-white varsity jacket with a big B on it. (page 145)

...Uncle Tinsley came through the door wearing one of his tweed jackets and his gray felt hat. (page 173)

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Have you read this author? One of her memoirs? Should I stop calling her a meh author?