Ursula, Under
Categories: Rediscoveries , Staff Picks , Fiction
I just remembered a wonderful book that I read about 2 years ago. Ursula Under by Ingrid Hill (2004) is the story of a little girl, Ursula Wong, who accidentally falls down the air shaft of an abandoned copper mine.
The book goes back in time to follow the family history that led to Ursula, whose ancestry is an amazing yet typically American mixed assortment of cultures and people. We also get to know Ursula's modern world and how wonderfully everything around her helps make her who she is.
Ursula's story is engrossing, it is empowering, and it has an ending that will stay with you for a long time. I loved this book!
Anyone who remembers little 18-month-old Jessica McClure falling into that tiny hole of her family's backyard well in 1987 might notice the similarity and wonder about Jessica, who is a married 20-year-old now!
I kind of accidentally fell down the shaft of this book. I picked it up randomly from a box of new books; I opened it up, and that was it. Totally hooked. I didn't go looking for this book; it found me. Here is the first line that pulled me in:
"On a crystalline, perfectly blue morning in June, after a day of angry pewter skies and of sheeting, driving rain, we enter our story. Clouds pile themselves picturesquely..."
How could I resist?
Ingrid Hill has written only one other book, a collection of short stories entitled Dixie Church Interstate Blues (1989), which I have not had the pleasure of reading, but a reviewer refers to it as "luminous".
1 Comment
I first read a story of hers in the unsolicited-manuscript pile of a magazine where I was working, and I was totally swept away. She’s had a lot of bad luck in her professional life, so I’m so glad she’s doing so well. Interestingly, she has 12 children. She sent the magazine a picture, and she looked so young it wasn’t easy to tell which one she was in the picture. She has a Web site also. I really look forward to reading this book.