Utopia, Oregon

by Eileen Pinkerton

Magpie is driving the back roads of Washington to the annual Barter Faire on the Starry Night bus with a young girl in her charge when she sees a stranger limping down the dirt road with his dog. He boards the bus with a sprained ankle, three broken ribs and a dark secret. A secret he will keep until the Walla Walla State Penitentiary is far behind him. Angeline is a tattoo artist on her way to Utopia, Oregon with her entomologist husband. When she meets up with Magpie and her bus full of eccentric characters, Angeline finds herself drawn to the Barter Faire and a dangerous criminal. Utopia, Oregon is a story of freedom that explains how a small girl can be a healer, paints a picture of the community that exists in a rural Barter Faire, and reveals the language of insects. It also explains the existence of the Starry Night bus.

282 pages, Paperback

First published May 9, 2012

Reviews

[Sammy Smooth · Rating 1 out of 5]

To call this book an amateur effort would be an insult to amateur writers everywhere. This book is riddled with typos, grammatical errors, syntax issues, and formatting blunders. We learn in third grade that semicolons; are only used to separate two sentences; that can stand each on their own.
Underneath it all is a story that might have been an acceptable fictional tale if it had been told by a capable author, one that knew how to create a world where random coincidences were not used as a story device on nearly every page.
This book started out like it may be an interesting read, with a main character that was seemingly wrongly imprisoned and escaped under dubious circumstances. Instead, the character turns out to be a sleazebag and dies halfway through the book. I was already wishing the book was over by this point, but it kept dragging on in a very start-stop-start-stop manner that made me want to give up. Half a page of text does not a whole chapter make.