AND CONDORS DANCED

A bittersweet, old-fashioned story of a young girl growing up in Ventura County, Calif., in 1907. Raised by her Great-aunt Mehitabel and her Chinese manservant Woo Ling, Carly finds that her weekly visits to their house in town are full of love and family fun. But at the ranch her father manages for her aunt, tensions abound. Her mother, once a pampered debutante but now an invalid, rarely acknowledges her youngest daughter. Her father, a failed teacher from Maine, is a strict disciplinarian. On top of that, the richest man in town wants to buy the family ranch; because they won't sell, he has denied them valuable water rights. Luckily, 11-year-old Carly has a strong enough sense of self to face the strains of everyday life as well as the deaths of her mother and her dog. Into this story Snyder weaves a fine sense of time and place, from Fourth of July picnics to dusty mule-rides into the foothills; and her prose flows, with images tapping all the senses. Carly's fascination with the great, ugly condors effectively captures turn-of-the-century California and creates a rhythm that connects the incidents in Carly's life and maintains the story's tension.