A Real Life Lost Horizon (5 stars)
I enjoyed reading Joseph J. Swope's poignant and bittersweet 'Pleasant Valley Lost'. The small daily triumphs and the relentless eventual tragedy that overcomes the extended Swope family (and all of Pleasant Valley) is richly portrayed here. They became like a second family as I read this – parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, and shopkeepers take their place around the reader as they swirl around the story’s narrator, young Eddy Swope. This first person voice works very well. By seeing this family farm and community through the eyes of an adolescent we experience its innocence, and the loss becomes more poignant. As the narrator becomes a young adult the language shifts a bit, and we then see the tragedy through Eddy's eyes as an adult.
This story summoned memories of my own early years, suggesting by gentle example how to live with loss. It becomes much more than a story about the coming of a dam and its effect on a community.
Many of the characters have only a single characterizing trait, thus bordering at times on caricature, perhaps of necessity due to the vast number of characters. One solution is to foreground fewer characters, and invest each with several key traits.
That said, the writer succeeds in bringing virtually everyone into the foreground of this portrait. Perhaps that's why it feels like a saga covering decades when in fact the key action covers about five years. The story leaps ahead to show what happens in the lives of all the characters. It’s harrowing, poignant, and life-affirming. It’s been years since I read such a wonderful family saga.
From the Book Description:
Set amid the turbulent times of the late 1960s, Pleasant Valley Lost chronicles the last days of a family dairy farm condemned to destruction by a federal dam project. As the family struggles to find a new home and build their future, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers moves into Pleasant Valley, ruthlessly destroying a community and its history.
'Pleasant Valley Lost' is based on the true story surrounding the author's childhood farm. Originally part of the estate of Pennsylvania's fifth governor, the farm had been in the Swope family since 1939 and was located in one of the most fertile areas of the region.
Pleasant Valley Lost also recounts the family's long-suffering devotion to baseball and the Philadelphia Phillies. Following many years of losing seasons, the Phillies finally provided cause for celebration when they claimed their first World Series title in 1980.
Today, Pleasant Valley and the Swope farm are submerged under the Blue Marsh Dam.
