|  |
| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 2 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
I want to see the Movie Jul 20, 2009
By M. J. Mitchell
I absolutely loved this book. A movie should be made! It is a saga of the true Connecticut beyond the elite wealthy of the shore. This was truth of the time in the depression based on my 95 year old grandmother who reminisced as I read. I was enthralled with the unique characters. The way the book was written made me feel as if I was experiencing their journey. I laughed out loud, I cried, I giggled and I was shocked and sometimes appalled. I experienced all emotions and look forward to the day that someone wises up and makes a movie of this spectacular book.
An unknown author by the worlds standards has written a block buster! Proud Giants brings home the suffering of people of color, of women, and sooooo much more. I escaped into this book;it captivated me. Thank you Ms.Rice for such a poignant story. I finished it three days ago as I write this reveiw but I still cannot stop thinking of it. Will there be a second book (Proud Giants II)?? I am purchasing many copies for gifts. Again, thank you for such a lovely travel through time & lives of unique and splendid characters. My grandmother thanks you too, for delivering such a powerful and truthful (even though it is considered fiction) capturing of the time of the depression. Wow!
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Proud Giants is a powerful book beautifully written! Mar 30, 2009
By Carolyn H. Lewis
"Carolyn-Hope Lewis"
Proud Giants is powerful. It is written with beautiful description and much meaning. June is my sister. Her characters move with courage and dignity as they walk through their difficulties. Her work is fiction but her characters are composites of real people. They have come alive inside my heart, as I weep, laugh and live through their lives. The locations and names of the towns, the creek, the beautiful Spring, are fiction. But they have become real to me, and successfully brought me beneath the shadow of Old Kings Mountain, into the emotions, the nostalgia of the 1930s, during the Great Depression, when the earth, itself was groaning, because of injustices that were being done to the Jews and others.
June's people portrayed those who lived in that era. They did not know that a "volcano" in the form of a war in a distant country was about to erupt, bring conflict (the Klan's rising, among other problems) and fear to America. Yet even in this "fear" June's heroes and heroines walked with God, each in their different persuasions! My favoirte people were Abraham Stuttgart and his nice, the beatiful Anna. And Caleb, of course, Caleb! His love for Anna was precious. Yet as I got to know each of the other characters I loved them too, alternately weeping and rejoicing with them as they overcame many of their problems in interesting ways. These wonderful Proud Giants rose from their sleep in my sister's mind, and became alive throughout her pages. In doing so, they gave me an insight into life during the Great Depression, which happened just before I was born. Her book left an imprint upon my life. It caused me to wake from my "sleep" as to what is going around me.
Reading at the end I sobbed! I sobbed for those Proud Giants, for the Jewish Adults and children who died and those who were saved. I sobbed for us today who are still sleeping and do not realize how fragile our beloved freedom is. I sobbed for the joy and the Glory that Caleb was seeking, that only God can pour into our hearts, if we wake up and let Him do so! I sobbed with the beauty of faith that only God can put inside us to give us strength and hope as we too walk through our difficulties in this recession.
My friends, we sleep in America even today. It is a sleep out of "false contentment". Most of us know, even in harder times that we in America walk with much more prosperity than those in other countries. We are blessed with many things and have been spoiled. Our needs are met; our appetites filled. We want only more, instead of thanking the Lord who allowed these blessings to rain down upon us. Even with this "recession", we have more than others and we take things for granted.
I actually lived under the shadow of that magnificent mountain, Sleeping Giant, in Connecticut for 47 years. Our grandparents, Proud Giants themselves, lived in the area June calls Old Kings Mountain and, growing up, I loved to visit with them in the summer. I remember visiting years later with my sister, June, in her little house in another location, but also under the shadow of the "Sleeping Giant", where she began tapping out those first pages of Proud Giants in the small room under the eves on her old typewriter.
Now I reside in another state, but every summer the mountain draws me back. When we arrive, my eyes scan the horizon for the "Sleeping Giant". When I have seen it, I know I have come home.
Home is America. Home is freedom to follow Christ if we desire and I wish to follow Him. That freedom especially should not be taken away from me! Home is other freedoms. Home is plenty, but there are those, even in this generation who would seep into our country under false pretenses and try to steal from us these very freedoms, by quiet deception and infiltration. We need to walk wise! We need to stay close to Christ, who, by the way, came to this earth as a Jew and walked with them, and who loves us all, and teaches us to love and care for each other. We need to be careful lest these many blessings lull us into a false security, into a sleep like the great Giant. We need to shed the stones of indifference and rise to the beauty of the morning Son!
Now, this summer when I return to Connecticut I will think of the locations and people in the book my sister wrote. Those wonderful places and magnifcent people have taken a hold of me, and given me a totally new outlook back in time and forward, as they compel me closer to the base of that wonderful mountain with its Granite Head! I will remember the Proud Giants who actually walked and lived there. Their personalities were portrayed and interweaved into the characters in the book and are now a part of my life.
Proud Giants is being published at an appropriate time. It has made me realize that as Americans we need to be watchful and defend these freedoms. We need an America undivided by race. Our politicians from all parties must at last work together and really care for the people they serve. We as the new generation of Proud Giants need to pray and work together as a united people so America can stand forever free and full of faith for the future. You will be glad you read June's book. Thank you.
|
| | |
|
|
