Strong Heart by Charlie Sheldon
Charlie Sheldon, the author of Strong Heart, lives in Ballard Washington, always keeping up with his love of writing. He is working on the next tale called Adrift, which will be published in 2018. Charlie has been a writer a long time with his publication of Fat Chance which came out in 2005. In his long life, he went to Yale and University of Massachusetts for Wildlife Biology and received a Master’s degree. He then began a lengthy career on the sea as a fisherman in New England, catching lobster, cod, haddock, red crab, and squid before being a consultant for Fishery Management Councils, then 28 years working on seaports as project and construction manager then being a Seaman and Bosun on a military ship.
Strong Heart is a 246-page book that you can either read or listen to. It grabs your attention as soon as you read it. As you read, you know there is a journey inside of a journey and you want to read until the end just to see what happens.
There’s a knock on the door and Tom answers it to find his ex-wife and a girl on his doorstep. His ex-wife says this is your granddaughter, Sarah and leaves. Tom was going hiking and camping on the mountain to make sure his grandfather’s grave was secure from the possibility of the mountain being developed. His friends persuade him to take Sarah with them and off they go with Tom saying it’s not a clever idea. At first, Sarah doesn’t want to go thinking it’s the end of the earth. Along the way, Sarah sees things that no one else does and William and his daughter believe her. Then it is discovered that Tom found an Native Indian artifact years ago and took it off the mountain and that he is part Native. Then Sarah goes missing, they search for her before calling for help. Eventually, the search is called off and only Tom, William are left to search. After being missing for 8 days, she finds her way to her grandfather. When she comes back she tells them what happened but only William believes her. Because of this, Sarah’s grandmother takes her back. Things began to happen as you continue to read this book that proves that she is telling the truth. You will need to read the book to find out.
This book is a story of coming of age for a teenage girl who it seems no one wants. First her mother dies years ago, then her stepdad decides to ship her off to her grandparents because he wants a time out, then her grandmother and her husband ships her off to Tom, her grandfather. Through this story, you see Sarah starting to grow and you start hoping that she has a permanent home with her grandfather. The relationship between her and her grandfather start to grow from not believing her to in the end believing her in what she says.
This is also an adventure book in that when they hike up the mountain something happens to them as a group and Sarah, alone. She goes missing for days and when she comes back with her own journey, her grandfather, Tom doesn’t believe her.
I love this book and can’t wait until I get to read Adrift next year. It is an amazing book with no mistakes that I can read. Charlie gives good detail on what is going on and what they see which is great because it’s like you are there with them climbing, hiking and camping. There is nothing that I didn’t like about this book.
I would rate this book a 4 out of 4 because it’s that good. Normally, this kind of book would have taken me days to read but this one I read almost all of it in one night. This book is good for teenagers, young adults and even adults. If you love family oriented, adventure and coming of age books then this is for you. I highly recommend everyone to read it for themselves.
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