Dead Man's River

by Elizabeth Laird

In a reader with a 200-word vocabulary, Jonas Clark decides to try and make his fortune panning for gold in Dead Man's River, rumored by some to be the home of ghosts.

16 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1997

About the author

Laird was born in New Zealand in 1943, the fourth of five children. Her father was a ship's surgeon; both he and Laird's mother were Scottish. In 1945, Laird and her family returned to Britain and she grew up in South London, where she was educated at Croydon High School.
When she was eighteen, Laird started teaching at a school in Malaysia. She decided to continue her adventurous life, even though she was bitten by a poisonous snake and went down with typhoid.

After attending the university in Bristol, Laird began teaching English in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She and a friend would hire mules and go into remote areas in the holidays.

After a while at Edinburgh University, Laird worked in India for a summer. During travel, she met her future husband, David McDowall, who she said was very kind to her when she was airsick on a plane. The couple were married in 1975 and have two sons, Angus and William.

Laird has also visited Iraq and Lebanon. She claims to dislike snakes, porridge and being cold but enjoys very dark chocolate, Mozart, reading and playing the violin in the Iraq Symphony Orchestra.

She currently lives in Richmond, London with her husband.

Reviews

[Jangal Publication]

It is just the time when there happened the beneficial appearance of the Gold Rush in the United States of America, on the very bank of the river once owned by a man nearly years before and now he has long died. Here is a man who is going to marry a woman he loves, but he is unfortunately rejected on his marriage proposal to her only due to the lack of money and to some significant extent of poverty, he decides to move straight as quickly as possible to the river where he hopes to find gold for himself so that he can win her heart to marry her. he turns out to get successful at the end in a way that he himself hadn’t imagined but the way he hadn’t expected he would win that large amount of gold there near the river where has been already occupied by ghosts…
this is the best.

[Santosh Thapa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jestha 20, 2078, Thursday

Dead Man's River - Elizabeth Laird (1997)
[Penguin Active Reading Easystarts]

Genres: EnglishGradedReaders/ Fiction
Pages: 16
Rating: 5/10

Theme: American Gold Rush

Opener:
“Jonas Clark comes into the bank. “Hetty, my dear,” he says. Hetty smiles. “I love you,” says Jonas. “Marry me.””

Summary:
It is the time of the American Gold Rush. Jonas Clark loves Hetty Gray, but is too poor to marry her. People think there is gold in Dead Man's River, but they also think there are ghosts there too. Jonas tries his luck, and is successful, but not in the way he had imagined.

Verdict:
This story very much reminded me of 80s Bollywood movies where the father of the girl would flat out refuse the hero’s proposal to marry her unless he is rich enough. The opening scene in this story is just that. Jonas Clark cannot get the love of his life because the girl’s father believes he does not have enough money to support family life. The story follows the protagonist as he, after assisting a helpless gentleman to escape from a couple of goons and cleverly chasing them away, comes in possession of a sufficient sum of money that would make him eligible in the eyes of the girl’s father. The ending is nice as it clearly shows that the girl in question is also in love with our protagonist whether he is rich enough or not.

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's ok. Is easy and light