5 Stars. First of all, I loved listening to this audiobook. Each part has a different narrator and they each do a fabulous job. What I really loved were the musical numbers by Corky Siegel. If Mike was playing “America the Beautiful” in the text, a harmonica would play the song softly in the background, for example. That kind of thing is [...]
Talmadge is in town selling the fruit from his orchard one day when he notices two girls watching him. They're very young and very pregnant. He dozes off for a few minutes and wakes as the girls run away with some fruit they've stolen. He decides not to chase them because they look hungry. A day or two later, the girls show up at the orchard. He starts cooking extra food and leaving it out for them but they won't let him get too close. Meanwhile, a stranger shows up in town looking for girls who sound an awful lot like the two Talmadge is watching over. Talmadge ponders things for a while and decides to meet with the stranger at his homestead. Talmadge does not like what he sees. The man, Michaelson, eventually offers to let Talmadge have 20 minutes with a nine-year-old girl for $2. Talmadge quickly leaves, resolved that Michaelson will never get his two girls back. I really liked this on audio. Narrator Mark Bramhall's rough voice suited the feel of the story perfectly. I got frustrated with the book though. A large part of it centers around Talmadge trying to find the youngest girl, Della, after she's grown up and left home. Della doesn't seem to give a flip about anything at that point, and she definitely doesn't care that she's breaking his heart. I tried to tell myself that she'd been through unimaginable things and I needed to cut her some slack but I couldn't. Then I would try to remind myself of the Prodigal Son and the parable of the lost sheep and that still didn't work (I don't know what it was about this book that brought out the Biblical references; it's not remotely religious). Della doesn't want to be found and…