Official Review: Buried Seeds by Donna Meredith
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Official Review: Buried Seeds by Donna Meredith
[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Buried Seeds" by Donna Meredith.]
Buried Seeds by Donna Meredith is a book that examines how the seeds that we bury in our lives grow into strength sometimes decades later. The story begins with Angie struggling with her place in the world. She is now a 50-year-old schoolteacher and has no real ambition beyond her role as a teacher, wife, and mother. On her fiftieth birthday, her adoptive mom gives her a genealogical scrapbook of Angie’s birth family. At first, she resists reading it. She’s hesitant to delve into learning anything about her birth family. Her mother insists that she should try reading it, stating that she will learn a lot about herself and her past by doing so. The scrapbook tells the story of one of Angie’s ancestors, Rosella, and the struggles she goes through at the turn of the century being a woman during the suffrage movement. Rosella is a naïve young woman who wants more than her West Virginia upbringing. She marries a man who moves them to San Francisco. Rosella bristles at the patriarchal society she lives in and works to gain rights for women. The book jumps between both timelines. The author labels each timeline and chapter, helping the reader keep track of the story.
Reading about Rosella’s struggles and triumphs gives Angie the courage to stand up for herself and her teacher’s union as they demand better pay. In doing so she gets out of her comfort zone and finds an inner strength she didn't know she had. She also begins her journey of healing her relationships with her sister, her husband, and her family.
I loved everything about this book. I especially loved the comparison of the two women, even though they are a century apart. I liked how the author drew clear parallels of what each woman was going through and dealing with. I also liked the slow burn realization that actions planted in the past, even decades beforehand, come to fruition. Reading about Rosella’s story helps Angie find the strength to become a champion for the teacher’s union association that she finds herself the president of. She realizes that her relationship with her husband is not always perfect and that there is value in standing up for herself. Rosella was probably my favorite character. The struggles Rosella faced are heartbreaking, but she handled them with grace and used her experiences to fight for better lives for all women.
My only dislike is that there are many formatting errors. These include spaces in the middle of words and inconsistent paragraph and line spacing. Therefore, I can’t say that this was professionally edited.
I had to take a star off for the egregious formatting errors. My rating is 3 out of 4. However, the story is interesting. A quick edit and glance over to fix the formatting errors would easily boost the rating. Learning about our history and the struggles women at the turn of the century faced, and learning that some of those same struggles still exist, was eye-opening for me.
This book is best suited to all audiences. Especially those who are interested in the history of the early feminist movement. The book discusses social issues in a way that humanizes the experiences, from medical practices of the early 1900s to the fights for better teacher pay in 2017. I would recommend this book to anyone.
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Buried Seeds
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Buried Seeds by Donna Meredith is a book that examines how the seeds that we bury in our lives grow into strength sometimes decades later. The story begins with Angie struggling with her place in the world. She is now a 50-year-old schoolteacher and has no real ambition beyond her role as a teacher, wife, and mother. On her fiftieth birthday, her adoptive mom gives her a genealogical scrapbook of Angie’s birth family. At first, she resists reading it. She’s hesitant to delve into learning anything about her birth family. Her mother insists that she should try reading it, stating that she will learn a lot about herself and her past by doing so. The scrapbook tells the story of one of Angie’s ancestors, Rosella, and the struggles she goes through at the turn of the century being a woman during the suffrage movement. Rosella is a naïve young woman who wants more than her West Virginia upbringing. She marries a man who moves them to San Francisco. Rosella bristles at the patriarchal society she lives in and works to gain rights for women. The book jumps between both timelines. The author labels each timeline and chapter, helping the reader keep track of the story.
Reading about Rosella’s struggles and triumphs gives Angie the courage to stand up for herself and her teacher’s union as they demand better pay. In doing so she gets out of her comfort zone and finds an inner strength she didn't know she had. She also begins her journey of healing her relationships with her sister, her husband, and her family.
I loved everything about this book. I especially loved the comparison of the two women, even though they are a century apart. I liked how the author drew clear parallels of what each woman was going through and dealing with. I also liked the slow burn realization that actions planted in the past, even decades beforehand, come to fruition. Reading about Rosella’s story helps Angie find the strength to become a champion for the teacher’s union association that she finds herself the president of. She realizes that her relationship with her husband is not always perfect and that there is value in standing up for herself. Rosella was probably my favorite character. The struggles Rosella faced are heartbreaking, but she handled them with grace and used her experiences to fight for better lives for all women.
My only dislike is that there are many formatting errors. These include spaces in the middle of words and inconsistent paragraph and line spacing. Therefore, I can’t say that this was professionally edited.
I had to take a star off for the egregious formatting errors. My rating is 3 out of 4. However, the story is interesting. A quick edit and glance over to fix the formatting errors would easily boost the rating. Learning about our history and the struggles women at the turn of the century faced, and learning that some of those same struggles still exist, was eye-opening for me.
This book is best suited to all audiences. Especially those who are interested in the history of the early feminist movement. The book discusses social issues in a way that humanizes the experiences, from medical practices of the early 1900s to the fights for better teacher pay in 2017. I would recommend this book to anyone.
******
Buried Seeds
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Latest Review: Buried Seeds by Donna Meredith
