A Place with Promise

by Edward Swift

A Place with Promise is a magical, generation-spanning fable about everything we think we've lost–except, as the denizens of Camp Ruby learn, it's all still there, if we only know where to look for it. Bessie Overstreet knows quiet Isaac is the man she's always wanted from the moment his fishing boat drifts into view. She marries him–amidst town gossip that Bessie "isn't quite like everybody else"–and settles into his precarious little house in Camp Ruby–a place filled with promise. She soon gives birth to twin girls who are so alike that everyone whispers, "They share the same mind." Another special daughter follows, Zeda Earl. Scarred by a dark family secret, it takes angry, restless Zeda half a lifetime to learn what the village savant Billy Wiggins senses and Bessie always knew–"It's not who you're born, it's what you become."

208 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 1987

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second Edward Swift book and I really enjoyed it. A Place With Promise is the tale of a group of eccentric people living along the Sabine river in turn-of-the-century East Texas.

Be warned that the story is somewhat farfetched and not politically-correct at times but that's okay, I don't think the author meant for the story to be taken too seriously.

To further try to describe this book, I'd have to say that if you mixed up Michael McDowell's Blackwater with Daniel Wallace's Big Fish you might come close to a story like this. If this book was to ever be made into a film, Tim Burton would have to direct.

If you need something different and odd to read, pick this book up, you'll love it.

[Hope · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another foray into the decidedly autobiographical East Texas World of Edward Swift's childhood. Swift loves his Camp Ruby people, and treats them with the respect and affection due these lovable, eccentric loonballs. Gentle, wise and insightful.