My first grievance with this week’s book was that I
totally did not understand the plot line. From the title, Drought, I got it
into my head that I was going to read about a world where there was no rain,
and that the main characters foraged for it. This is not the case. And by the
time I wrapped my head around the real
plot—that this is a book about a religious cult starring a girl whose blood can
heal wounds and grant you almost-eternal life—the author’s subplot careened off
course and became the main plot line.
Since 1812, this Congregation has been living in the
Adirondack foothills, scavenging for water. Before 1812, a woman named Sula met
a man named Otto, whose blood had magical qualities. Sula fell in love with
Otto, and the two formed a religion of sorts, gathering in believers. Of
course, America in1812 was not tolerant of Otto’s claims to fame. Otto runs
away, leaving his Congregation, and a pregnant Sula, behind.
When Ruby is born, a man named Darwin West has
virtually enslaved the Congregation, forcing them to collect water, which he
believes holds the key to immortal life. It is, although no one knows it but
Sula and the Elder’s, Ruby’s blood that gives the Water its life-giving
qualities.
And then one day, an Overseer comes to monitor the
Congregation. Unlike the other Overseers, he is kind, and gentle, and very
attractive to Ruby…
This was not the book that was advertised, and not
the book that I believe the author, Pam Bachorz, wanted to write.
To put what I mean into perspective, we need to take
a quick look at Pam Bachorz’s other book, Candor.
Candor
is
a place where everyone is brainwashed with mind messages, and the main
character, Oscar, manages to find a way to negate them. Oscar even manages to
make some profit rescuing teenagers from the subliminal messages and getting
them out of Florida. However, his life is turned upside down when a girl shows
up in the city of Candor…
The common thread between both books is brainwashing. Ruby, the main character
in Drought, is brainwashed into believing that her Congregation’s Christ-like
figure will come back and rescue her people from slavery. Ford, her lover, is
brainwashed into thinking that Jesus is the only person whose blood has
supernatural entities. They’re all brainwashed, the same way that Candor was
brainwashed into following subliminal messages. These are books about power,
these are books about control, and these are books on how your mind can be a
prison.
However, you have a very hard time guessing that.
Everything needed to make this book good is there.
Sula is abusive towards her daughter, seeing her as less holy than Otto, even
though they share the same blood, with the same qualities. Ruby is just a
commodity to Sula, whose blood will hold the Congregation until Otto can come
back and save them from Darwin West. Her mind is trapped by a dangerous belief,
that it is Otto who saves, and Otto who will return, and she is so convinced of
this she is willing to deny her own daughter.
An interesting parallel to this is Pam Bachorz’s
insistence on making Ford, Ruby’s lover, a Catholic. This is a detail that is
not necessary at all in the story. In fact, it’s downright annoying, to have a
love scene, followed by Ford asserting that only Christ’s blood is holy, and
Ruby is sinning, but oh, isn’t Ruby so sexy…?
With some tweaking, Bachorz could have made this an
interesting comparison. The Congregation believes Otto Saves, and Otto Will
Return. Christians believe that Christ saves, and Christ Will Return. What is
the difference between a Cult and a Religion? Is there a difference at all?
I kept waiting for Pam Bachorz to make these
connections, or even subtly make the reader connect the dots for herself, but
she didn’t. The only reason I caught this at all is because I myself am Roman
Catholic, and her portrayal of Ford as a Roman Catholic irked me (because he was doing it wrong!).
In fact, once Ford and Ruby start to get
romantically involved, the plot dies. All Ruby wants to do is run away with
him, at one point even abandoning her very sick mother to spend the night with
him at the movies. As the reader, I was appalled by Ruby’s behavior, and could
not understand how she could leave her mother.
Everything that this book could have been is
distorted by Ford and Ruby’s romantic entanglement. Ruby forsakes her
Congregation, herself, and her ideas to be with him, and the way Pam Bachorz
words it, Ruby appears to leave the Congregation more to be with Ford than to
look for Otto. By the way the book ends, I would guess Bachorz is planning a
sequel, but I have no idea how she is going to pull that off. The reader still
has no idea where Otto is hiding, and all I can imagine Ruby doing in the
outside world is eating and making love to Ford.
Ruby is in no way the strong character that Pam
Bachorz hoped for, and her writing left me very dissatisfied. She was unable to
tell the story she really wanted to tell, penning instead a watery, unsteady
version of the novel this could have been. This is the greatest disappointment
for me. When a writer is unable to write the story she meant to tell, that is a
sure sign that she has failed.
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