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THE
POWDER MONKEY Reviewed
by: Rachel A Hyde, MyShelf.Com If you love sea stories and have delved into secondhand stores in search of gems by early writers like Captain Marryat, this book is going to have plenty of appeal. George J. Galloway has certainly done his homework and confected a novel that describes life in Baltimore during the early years of the 19th century and at sea, but he has gone one further and actually written it the style of a 19th century classic novel. The tale concerns young Michael Dooley who works diligently for the family cooperage and waits for his father to come sailing home on the brig where he is working as a carpenter. But then war breaks out and he is impressed by the British. Michael decides that a rescue operation is in order and joins the crew of a privateer as a powder monkey. He has hope and love to sustain him and the words of the code of St. Thomas Aquinas, passed down from father to son for generations. If you like sea stories that are packed with adventure, fighting and hairy escapades from which the characters escape by the skin of their teeth, then this one might come as a disappointment for most of the time it falls short of exciting, which is a flaw. But it needs to be read for the descriptions which bring the whole to life so vividly and the entertaining characters such as Michael's Uncle Bob, as Irish as poitin and Captain of the Marines on the ship, feisty orphan Jessica who has an interesting way of mending the church roof, and Father John, the fiery little French priest. There is a lot of history in here too, and if you want to get the feel of what life was like at sea during the war of 1812, then this will give you a good idea. If Galloway makes his next book more exciting, then he will shape up into a fine sea story writer in the Marryat tradition. Check out the Website at www.thepowdermoneky.com |
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