Okay, it's official:
I'm a Dusti Bowling fan. The
first book I read by her was "The Canyon's Edge." It's a beautiful, heartbreaking novel in
verse, and I loved it—even though I'm not a huge poetry fan.
"Across the Desert" is a prose novel, and Dusti
Bowling has shown that she can do both and do them well.
And yeah, maybe the premise is a little hard to swallow,
but just swallow it. You'll thank me
later.
I loved the characters.
The writing was engaging.
I loved the setting.
I'm an Arizonan who loves the outdoors, and it's nice to see our deserts
represented in a kid's book. I'm not
familiar with the Alamo Lake area, so I can't speak to Bowling's accuracy
there, but she accurately portrayed the central Arizona summer heat (and didn't
add to the myth of the summer desert suddenly plunging to freezing temperatures
overnight). My main criticism of
"The Canyon's Edge" was that some of the Arizona-ness of it seemed
exaggerated to the point of inaccuracy, which made for a good story but kind of
bothered me. In this book, I felt she
painted a much more realistic picture of our desert and the real obstacles and
dangers the main character would face.
The plot and pacing were good. The situation just kept going from bad to
worse. I cared greatly (and worried
about) what would happen to the characters.
All in all, a great read.
Now I'm going to have to read everything else she's written.
More accurate rating—more like 4.5 (But a high 4.5)