The Cave [Hardcover]

Grade 5-7-Twelve-year-old Christine's life on a South Dakota homestead affected by both a drought and the Depression seems constricted, difficult, and dusty. While her younger brother Michael struggles for each asthmatic breath and baby William wails an infant's typical demands, the girl's tired parents battle to survive. To vent her frustration, Christine pounds a rock repeatedly against a crusty hillside and is astonished to break into a cave. It is coolly wet, mysteriously windy, and wonderfully beautiful. Together, she and Michael find fish, waterfalls, and crystalline rooms. When their father discovers the amethyst geodes they have brought home, he demands to know where they came from, and Christine, wanting to protect the place from humanity's destructiveness, refuses to tell. Detailing the Blue Willow plates, the Orange Crush sign, and funeral-parlor calendar, Karr excels in re-creating time and place. Her sweet, well-crafted story of a family forced to be tough by the extremes of nature can stand well on its own, but she also sketches an interesting ecological debate. Christine's father believes God has given man dominion over the Earth and exhausts every resource of the farm in driven determination to care for his family. Christine feels people may make the perfect less perfect and eventually bring nature to ruin. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between, and only when father and daughter share their despair and fear does true reconciliation take place. The Cave is lyrically serious.
Cindy Darling Codell, Clark Middle School, Winchester, KY
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 4-7. Dust rules the Depression-era farm of Christine's South Dakota family. It chokes Christine's brother, who suffers from asthma, and threatens to force the family from their home. The cave Christine discovers in the foothills is at first only a refuge, but when she and her brother explore it, they find water. Christine feels the cave is God's gift and should be protected, yet she wants, above all, to stay on the farm. Natural forces intervene so that the fate of the family does not rest on the 12-year-old's shoulders, but Christine's struggle to choose is interesting nonetheless. Karr creates an active and believable girl in the throes of both physical and emotional change--a sort of Depression-era Caddie Woodlawn--and sets her in a historical background deftly seen from a child's angle. Mary Harris Veeder

Three years into a drought in Depression-era South Dakota, while Christine's father is preparing to leave his farm and take his family to California, Christine and her little brother Michael are hiding an amazing secret--a cave they found in the nearby hills, filled with wonders beyond imagining. First, there is the water, a clear cool underground stream that moistens the air and relieves Michael's asthma. Second, the myriad rooms filled with crystals, stalactites, and frozen waterfalls. And finally, the smooth stones lying everywhere that contain treasure within them. Although torn by her decision to keep the cave a secret from her parents, Christine is afraid of what her father would do to it if he knew. Christine remembers the cottonwoods that used to grow by the now dried-up stream, long gone to the woodpile, and fears that her father will rape her cave as well. But when Christine's father finds the stones that she and Michael had inadvertently brought home, it is up to the cave to protect itself. Christine, meanwhile, discovers secrets within her own body, and the strength she will need to survive in years to come. Fine period detail and masterful writing grace Karr's (Gideon and the Mummy Professor, 1993, etc.) story of quiet courage during hard times. (Fiction. 10+) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Twelve-year-old Christine discovers a wonderful secret on her father's South Dakota farm--an unexplored cave with a secret of its own--something that might save her family from the drought and Depression that threaten to destroy the farm.