Promised Lands

January 31, 1994
Readers of Crook's second historical novel (after The Raven's Bride ) will probably remember most vividly the sheer bodily pain and discomfort, described in often sickening detail, experienced by all of the characters presented here. In this absorbing narrative, Crook tells of two families, one American and one Mexican, involved in the Texas Rebellion of 1836; their lives become politically and emotionally related. Crook's careful research results in a vivid and unsparing portrait of the physical and psychological horrors of the conflict. Parents are separated from children, wives from husbands, brothers from sisters; the wounded wander the land like ghosts; there is little mercy towards prisoners. Crook's prose, while suffering occasional lapses in word choice (in what is supposed to be a romantic scene between Katie and William, Crook writes that ``William wormed in close to her''), is generally tough and wise (when, after Katie loses her grasp on her grandmother and the old woman slips into the river and is washed away, ``Katie thought how horrible for Grand to know that the final human touch she ever had was someone letting go''). Crook conveys an almost tactile sense of life in a different time.

December 1, 1994
YA-The battle for Texas independence in the 1830s is exemplified by the Kenner family, who are homesteaders enduring the privations of war. The women, sent fleeing to safety from the advancing Santa Anna, are jostled and frightened by dangerous wagon trips while the men march against the Mexicans outside of Goliad. In the middle of a battle while surrounded by sulfur-filled air, sounds of guns and cries of wounded men, Toby Kenner, 11, spots the zig-zag flight of a butterfly and a beetle crawling through the grass, each intent on daily activity. The juxtaposition of events is a chilling example of the realism portrayed in this book; there are no happy endings, only the finality of war. Detailed scenes fill the pages, whether describing a whipping or a scalping, or preparations to build a campfire or commence battle. All of the unglamorous aspects of war are delineated: overburdened, creaking carts; dying oxen; men arguing among themselves; and extreme thirst and hunger. Rich historical fiction.-Pam Spencer, Fairfax County Public Schools, VA

March 15, 1994
From the first horrifying pages, when a Comanche raiding party brutally murders most of the Scottish immigrant Mackay family, Crook sweeps a large cast of characters along on the tide of events that was the Texas rebellion of 1836. Sarah Mackay's brother, William, arrives in Texas to learn that only Callum Mackay and a baby boy have survived. William finds the baby and entrusts him to the care of Katie Kenner, only daughter of a homesteading family. After the Alamo's fall, the Kenners are forced to leave their farm. With elder son Miles already leading a small rebel band, Hugh Kenner takes younger son Toby to join Sam Houston's rebel army. The other Kenners, William and baby in tow, head for the U.S. border with a mass of refugees. Meanwhile, on the Mexican side of the conflict is powerful rancher Domingo De La Rosa, whose sister Crucita spies for him. Crook manages her large canvas well, engaging our interest throughout. ((Reviewed Mar. 15, 1994))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1994, American Library Association.)