Rainbows in the Desert

I came across this little book while waiting for my appointment with my chiropractor, Carol Ambrosius. It turns out that before she decided on chiropractic as a profession, Dr. Carol was an aspiring author. And a few years ago she decided to pursue that earlier ambition and write a novel. The result is Rainbows in the Desert (2009),  a work of young adult fiction that tells the story of a very independent and adventurous young girl, Karen, and her younger sisters growing up in the Mojave Desert back in the sixties.

Once again I have fallen under the spell of a story I probably would not have chosen had it not been written by someone I knew. And once again I've been surprised by the quality of the writing and the well crafted story. What I found most appealing was the personality of the central character. Carol Ambrosius does a great job of describing the world from the perspective of a ten year old girl who has been allowed the freedom to run wild in her beloved desert. Naturally, she gets into some trouble with her sisters from time to time, but nothing really terrible seems to happen. The desert is their playground, and they seem fearless of everything but the scorching heat.

All of that changes when their mother agrees to look after Starr, the somewhat prissy child of her best friend, who is just about the same age as Karen, but of a completely different temperament. Karen and her sisters at first see Starr as something of drag, someone who doesn't like to get dirty and doesn't seem to see the point of many of the girls' adventures. But all four females are soon caught up in a mystery when they hear reports of a bank robbery in Los Angeles, and then discover strangers have taken up residence in a deserted miner's cabin that Karen and her sisters have been using as their playhouse hideaway. Not long afterwards, the girls discover a young boy lurking in what they believe is their own secret cave and are soon convinced that he is none other than the son of one of the bank robbers.

Adventures, plots, and a terrible accident eventually result, in the aftermath of which Karen and her sisters have to grow up very quickly and face the consequences of their fantasies and lack of concern for adult fears and cautions. Shortly afterwards Karen and her family move away from her desert playground to begin a new life in the city. But years later, when Karen has grown and become the mother of Paula, a child with perhaps even more imagination than Karen herself (if that's possible), she and her daughter return to the desert, and Karen confronts her past through her adult eyes, as well as through the eyes of her daughter who awakens memories of Karen's own childhood.

The double perspective of Karen as child and Karen as mother of her own daughter brings out the meaning of the story without being too didactic. I enjoyed the insights the book offers into the mind of a ten year old. The novel's plain yet fluid, straightforward style, is very suitable to the characters and captures the innocence and honesty in their point of view, even when they are quite consciously deceiving the grownups who are trying to look after them. Carol also deftly transitions from and to the perspective of an adult Karen, whose narrative frames the story of the children. This is really a very well written book. Carol Ambrosius published it herself, accomplishing something she had set aside to pursue other goals, but Rainbows in the Desert would be a great candidate for some commercial publisher. It's a book that should be available to a larger audience.