| HTML: | ISBN 1-58338-326-3 | $3.75 |
| CD-ROM: | ISBN CD 1-58338-329-8 | $8.00 ppd |
| View the book cover. |
What kind of a world are we leaving to our children? The answer to this question has motivated my life for the past thirty years. This is why my attention was grabbed and my sympathy enlisted on the very first page of Phyllis Modeland's Where Eagles Soar: her heroine's task in life is to save endangered animals from extinction. In particular, she is saving that American emblem, the bald eagle.
The language of this book is lucid and clear, so that characters quickly become people, and the setting is vivid and lifelike. I have never been to the Ozarks, but felt that I was there while following Jo, the likeable and all too human heroine.
Reading the Prologue, I thought, Oh, a romance, though in a wonderful naturalist setting, but then the action started. From Chapter One onwards, the tension is unremitting. Very soon into the book I forgot that I was reviewing it. I just wanted to read on, to find out what happened next.
And mixed in with the fun bits, though never heavy, are points of ethics: about conservation, drugs violence, the equality of the sexes. Here is an example:
"Why would anyone want to shoot a bald eagle?" she breathed.
Tan grunted. "Because it is there, I fear. And because they are jealous that it is big and wild and free in a way they never can be, shackled as they are to their little lives and their little identities."
This is a book you've got to read.
Phyllis Rossiter Modeland is a former teacher, librarian, and newspaper editor/publisher now devoting her time to writing, editing, and teaching. She was first published nationally at the age of 16 after winning an award in a nationwide competition. In addition to her books, Phyllis's short stories have appeared in anthologies as well as literary and commercial magazines, and she has published hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles and columns, including her own photographs, on a wide variety of subjects. She tends to specialize, however, in her beloved Ozarks. She makes appearances as a guest speaker, participates in writers' programs as a lecturer and panelist, and leads continuing-education workshops at area colleges. She has taught at two vocational-technical schools and at week-long courses in writing at an Elderhostel.
A fervent "e-book evangelist," Phyllis is the Publisher and Co-Editor of The RunningRiver Reader, the Readers' Online Guide to E-Books. http://www.runningriver.com/readerarchives/
I 'met' Phyllis when my short story collection Striking Back From Down Under had its very first review in the Running River Reader, Phyllis's excellent online magazine. Her email address is phyllismodeland@runningriver.com.
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