"Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge" Review

BOOK  REVIEW

 by Susan Sewell for Readers' Favorite

     Sweet Music On Moonlight Ridge (The Moonlight Ridge Series Volume 1) by Ramey Channell is a captivating and charming novel set in Alabama in the nineteen-fifties. Lily Claire and Willie T. are cousins; their mothers are sisters. They were born on the same day, at the same time, in the same hospital, and in the same room. Granny declared that because their mothers brawled with each other during their delivery, the two cousins were marked with a lifetime of squabbling. 
     Although they do have their skirmishes, Lily Claire and Willie T. are rarely separated and are adept at causing devilment. Performing a rain dance that ruins a perfectly sunny day, or following a treasure map they find from an unexpected source, Lily Claire and Willie T. live in a world that is simple yet complicated. There's rain and sunlight, birth and death in their world, and no matter what they did on the mountain, they did it together. Keeping their eyes out for the wolfeener, the awfullest scary booger on the mountain

     Sweet Music On Moonlight Ridge is a humorous and delightful tale about Lily Claire and Willie T. and their childhood escapades on Moonlight Ridge. It is an enchanting story depicting a child's perspective of her world and how she perceives the magic in the normal and the strange occurrences she and her relatives encounter. Ms. Channell captures and embodies the mountain's otherworldly essence that is hidden just beyond the veil and blends it with the love of hearth and home. Despite the fact that the lives of the characters are fraught with hardship, they confront it with courage and strength. Lily Claire and Willie T.'s exploits are entertaining and humorous, capturing the reader's imagination. This bewitching narrative reaches deep into the soul where the longing for family and community resides. This is an incredible story that brought back fond memories of my own childhood. I laughed, loved, and cried through Lily Claire's and Willie T.'s antics. It is an amazing novel and I am so glad that I had the opportunity to read it.

      Lily Claire and Willie T. spend their days exploring the untamed and mystical world of the mountain they live on. What can possibly happen?

-Susan Sewell

Book Review from Alabama Writers' Forum

Here we are, heading into the holidays, a perfect time for good books and good stories. Just out is a truly great review of Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge, posted on Alabama Writers' Forum's First Draft website. I was thrilled by the comprehensive description, and the way the reviewer identified with both the story and the characters. I just had to share this!

First Draft Reviews Online, Alabama Writers' Forum, November 2010
http://www.writersforum.org/

Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge
Reviewed by Perle Champion

In Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge, Ramey Channell doesn't narrate as Lily Claire, she is Lily Claire.

For those of you who've had no children, and/or have forgotten what it's like to be one, buckle up. This is not a slow walk of a book. Lily Claire's breathless detailed telling of just about everything that happens in her small world is told as if it was the most important thing in all the world, and you should know it.

Channell steps into Lily Claire's very person and stays there throughout the entire book. You, the reader, are her confidant as she learns of ordinary heroes, and ponders the serendipity of life. You are privy to the secret world of a childhood whose freedom few have known and many today would envy.

Around the mysterious map to an imagined treasure she and Willie T. find in an unlikely place, she weaves her history and that of all the diverse and sometimes eccentric folks and topics that inform her world. All are treated with that light childish and non-judgmental matter-of-factness that is so refreshing and true to the nature of the very young.

There is no heavy hand here about the "Ku Kluxes' " quick-to-lynch mentality or the superstitious nature of rural peoples that make the white lies Willie T. and Lily Claire tell necessary. It's just plain necessary to protect the slow one and the black one in their midst, who are the most likely scapegoats for a crime that was no crime at all.

Channell has the sure cadence of a storyteller that is not only simple, sincere, and to the point, but it's part of the music. Is there music on Moonlight ridge? Yes, but it is not just played, sung, or spoken aloud. It exists in the steady pace of the story, the people, the laughter, the polysyllabic names, and the language.

Having lived in the south off and on for many years, I didn't need the handy glossary at the back of the book to tell me that "boocoos" means "lots." Just goes to show that being raised in the South is useful. This book was not just boocoos of fun to read, it is a gentle reminder of my own idyllic summers when every day held the promise of adventure, just like Lily Claire's.

Perle Champion is a freelance writer and artist.


Thanks so much, Perle, for this wonderful and greatly appreciated review!