Where The River Takes Us
Narrator thirteen-year-old Jason and his older brother Richie live alone since their parents died in a car crash. They struggle to make ends meet and risk losing their home. The plot revolves around a quest by Jason and his friends to find and take a ‘clear, exclusive photo’ of a big cat believed to be roaming near Blaengarw, some distance from where they live, which they think they can track down if they follow the river. The £100 reward offered by a local newspaper would help Jason and Richie in their straitened circumstances.
Lesley Parr’s novels have vividly painted Welsh settings and are written in the present tense, giving them a feeling of immediacy for young readers. Her first and second books were set in World War Two and World War One respectively. In this third middle-grade novel, she explores the lives of children in a more recent time. The backdrop for the story is the 1970s UK miners’ strike and the three-day working week, and details redolent of the time emerge, including references to using candles and paraffin lamps, mentions of penny sweets popular at the time such as midget gems, sherbet dabs and liquorice, and the specific camera – a Pentax Spotmatic SP500 – that they borrow which was first manufactured in 1971. The mining industries are disappearing from the Welsh valleys, and Jason recalls that ‘Dad always used to say you can’t take work away and not give the people anything to replace it.’.
Within the framework of a fast-paced adventure, Lesley Parr has produced a sensitive story concerning children trying to come to terms with grief, while coping with some harsh practical realities, and the group of friends that surround and support them.
