Under the Persimmon Tree (Post 2)

“How can a woman named Help not return to America to make peace with her family? Perhaps she will return to Afghanistan to honor the name her husband gave her by building a school there. And how can a girl named Star and a boy named Light not go back to their land in the shadow of a mountain named to honor their ancestors’ hearts? For there is great value to lives lived in a village called Golestan, which means ‘beautiful garden’” (270).

Okay, so I’ll admit that when I first started reading this book, I almost quit. The whole, drama, I-can’t-go-on-because-the-world-around-me-is-falling-apart-and-I-have-such-a-rough-life-right-now kind of story isn’t usually my thing. While I think these stories are interesting, and I always like hearing about people in other cultures and experiences, I just don’t usually get into reading this type of book. Oh, and the book also starts out with all kinds of names I couldn’t pronounce and didn’t understand. That annoys me. That being said, I kept reading the book for some reason. Being the nerd that I am, I got sucked in. The devastation and the horrors that the characters in this book witnessed and experienced were just incredible. It almost brought me to tears a couple times (right there in class!), and it definitely made me stop and think about how lucky I am to have such a safe and simple life here in KC, MO. Anyway, so I’m thinking, “All right, this book isn’t half bad.”

And then the quote from above comes along. I spent the entire 269 pages preceding this quote following and getting attached to these characters, whose names mean Help, Star, and Light (that’s not their actual names). Then, on the very last page of the book (270), Suzanne Fisher Staples decides to leave me hanging. She didn’t tell me what happened to any of the characters. Errrgghh! At least the rest of the book was good.