A Love Letter to Farming, Family, and Friends!
The Wish and the Peacock
by Wendy S. Swore
Publication Date: February 4, 2020
Publisher: Shadow Mountain Publishing
Length: 304pp
ISBN-13: 978-1629726083
Book Design: © Shadow Mountain
Cover Illustration: Brandon Dorman
Art Direction: Richard Erickson
Design: Sheryl Dickert Smith
Praise
“The Wish and the Peacock is a thoughtful novel about love, loss, and the hope of a new beginning.” — Foreword Reviews
“Heartfelt and funny, the story captures the lives of often underrepresented farming families. An impressive tale carrying universal themes of grief, change, and letting go.” — Kirkus
About the Author
Wendy S. Swore and her family are farmers. She writes part-time, particularly in winter when her farming chores give her time to plant seeds in her imagination. She is a member of SCBWI. She was named the Idaho Farm Bureau District 1 Woman of the Year in 2018.
Visit the author at WendySwore.com
Publisher Synopsis
Paige’s favorite family tradition on the farm is the annual bonfire where everyone tosses in a stone and makes a wish. This time, Paige’s specific wish is one she’s not sure can come true: Don’t let Mom and Grandpa sell the farm.
When Paige’s younger brother finds a wounded peacock in the barn, Paige is sure it’s a sign that if she can keep the bird safe, she’ll keep the farm safe too. Peacocks, after all, are known to be fierce protectors of territory and family.
With determination and hard work, Paige tries to prove she can save the farm on her own, but when a real estate agent stakes a “For Sale” sign at the end of the driveway and threatens everything Paige loves, she calls on her younger brother and her best friends, Mateo and Kimana, to help battle this new menace. They may not have street smarts, but they have plenty of farm smarts, and some city lady who’s scared of spiders should be easy enough to drive away.
But even as the peacock gets healthier, the strain of holding all the pieces of Paige’s world together gets harder. Faced with a choice between home and family, she risks everything to make her wish come true, including the one thing that scares her the most: letting the farm go.
My Review
Although it deals with grief, The Wish and the Peacock is a joy to read. Beautifully written, at times lyrical and atmospheric, this funny, smart, and heartwarming tale is a love letter to farming, family, and friends.
As we meet Paige, she’s working hard to get the farm chores done without her father’s help. Since his accidental death, her mother has been working hard at nursing school and is consumed with sadness. When Paige finds a peacock on the property, she’s determined to nurse it back to health with her brother Scotty’s help. And since they’d like to keep this peacock, they keep him a secret. But when Paige learns her mother is considering selling the farm, she and Scotty have more than a secret peacock to protect!
Paige and Scotty’s humorous high jinks as they attempt to sabotage the sale of their Idaho farm will make you laugh. Though secondary characters, Paige’s neighbors and friends Mateo and Kimana — the former of Latin descent, the latter Shoshone-Bannock — are fully realized. As Paige works through her grief and grapples with change, she also learns that it’s okay to ask for help, and that friends are more than willing to share the workload.
There is much to love in this charming story of a fiercely determined farm girl. Light, humorous scenes are plentiful and counterbalance moments of narrative tension. Author Swore, herself a farmer, splendidly shares her love for the land in evocative, descriptive prose, including one remarkable passage which vividly details the difference between sunrise and dawn.
Recommended for readers of all ages who have enjoyed emotionally affecting family-friendly stories like those written by Deborah Wiles (Love, Ruby Lavender; The Aurora County All-Stars; Each Little Bird That Sings).
— Dawn Teresa
Verdict
5 of 5 Hearts. A love letter to farming, family, and friends!
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*Disclosure of Material Connection: I would like to thank Shadow Mountain Publishing for providing me with an Advance Reader’s Edition of The Wish and the Peacock. I was not required to post a review. This is my honest opinion.
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