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Deep Roots Review Appears in Atlantic Books Today
With Deep Roots, Kathleen tudor manages to accomplish a lofty goal. She helps the modern reader understand why the seemingly noble goal of creating a national park could be so traumatic to a small fishing community. With rich detail, the lives and landscape of a South Shore community are explored and understood. The traditional subsistence lives and the the so-called progress of the modern world collide, leaving a rift in community and family. This tight knit community, used to banding together for survival, is now divided and wrenched apart by political decisions from on high.
The focal point for the story is the Hardy family, a large, now mostly frown family long based in the small community of Collupy Point. Through them the reader sees the impact of change and the depth of the roots that bind people to the land and, by extension , the sea. Though slow paced and, at times, plodding, Tudor’s skillful description brings the reader to understand the devastating impact of such change but also shows the power of the community. Patriarch Ira Hardy is particularly well drawn and is an interesting study in how a man who is master of his small environment and large family can find himself so vulnerable. His ultimate struggle speaks to a wider human fear of losing that for which we all work so hard, and the all too real fragile concept of ownership.
“I ain’t got nothing against them men sitting up there, nothing at all,” says Ira Hardy at one point in the book, “But not one of them’s got a boat or nome or child in the park they talk about. But they’re the ones deciding everything for us. If we’re fools enough to let them do that then we’ll deserve what we get.”
Deep Roots is a picture of community, family and the srtuggle between the past and the future. Readers may find the level of detail weighs down the story at times but ultimately Tudor leads the reader to a valuable lesson.-Meghan Veener, Atlantic Books Today, Holiday 2009