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A Curse Dark as Gold by Elizabeth Bunce
A Curse Dark as Gold By Elizabeth Bunce
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Charlotte Miller has just lost her father, and now she stands to lose the family wool mill as well if she can’t find a way to keep in competition against the steam powered factory mills of the city. Unfortunately, the mill seems to have a mind of its own and the curse that has plagued her family for generations is quickly catching up with her. But, everything in the town revolves around her mill, everyone’s livelihood depends on the work the old mill produces, and Charlotte will do whatever it takes to take care of her town.
Soon a banker comes to collect on her father’s debts and take her beloved mill away from her. Charlotte must do whatever it takes to keep her mill active, even if it means making deals with an odd little man named Jack Spinner. But when his final price for his services is her baby boy, she knows she must find a way to break the family curse that keeps the mill from prospering or a son from living until he can inherit, and echoes back to the terrible actions of her ancestor.
One of the best elements of this book was that I didn’t feel like I was reading a fairytale retelling. Now I should explain what I mean by that, because it’s pretty obvious I love a fairytale retelling. Ella Enchanted is one of my favorite books of all time. But in A Curse Dark as Gold, the Rumpelstiltskin elements were woven in with so much care that it was easy to imagine this was a story completely on its own. In fact, I’d compare this more to a ghost story/mystery more than I would a fairytale. I found the mystery elements to be the most compelling, and they kept me hooked page after page.
In fact, if it hadn’t been pointed out to me that this was a Rumpelstiltskin retelling, it probably would have taken me quite a few chapters to realize it. Sure, the golden thread shows up, as well as the taking of the baby, but we never see Rumpelstiltskin (who isn’t named that in the book) dancing around a fire, singing silly songs, and Charlotte has far more personality and control than the Miller’s Daughter (her name in the original) is ever given. Bunce did a good job of using the original fairytale as a starting point, but didn’t force the story to conform to our preconceived notions about the tale.
The setting was also well done, taking place at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, in a small town caught between new and old. We have the competing ideas of old folk legends and Christianity, new steam powered machines and old hand run mills, and a girl on the edge of womanhood. These ideas complement each other very well, completing the story and bringing it all together.
Ratings Reasons:
Action 4 - The book was fast-paced and interesting on every page.
Romance 4 1/2 - The romance was very well played out and believable. Sure, a few problems might have been solved by talking it out, but no one ever does that in books, and often not in real life either.
Characters 5 - I thought all the characters were complex and well-developed.
Overall 5 - Loved it. Need I say more?
Extras:
This is the debut book by Elizabeth Bunce, but I hope we will see many more tales from her. She has a website that features news and updates about book signings.
In my search for more information about wool mills, I came across a mill in Michigan that dates back to 1889 that still processes wool today. They have a video on how the wool is processed, including the carding machine from the 1870s. I would imagine that machine is a lot like the one in the book. Just click on the video link in the history pages to see. They also talk about some of the changes that have happened through out the last hundred years.
Miss Erin has a great interview with Elizabeth Bunce about the writing of the book.
Spinners by Donna Jo Napoli & Richard Tchen is also about the Rumpelstiltskin tale, but I did not particularly enjoy it. The Crimson Thread (the Once Upon a Time Series’s take on Rumpelstiltskin) by Suzanne Weyn will also be coming out later this year.
Here is SurLaLune’s annotated Rumpelstiltskin. I also found wikipedia to have some good analysis of the elements of the tale.
Parents: 10+ This is a great multi-age book that will have something for all readers to enjoy.
I think your Amazon link at the top of the page is pointing to “The Crimson Thread” by mistake. Already loved the book - just reading reviews now….
crichoux reply on March 13th, 2008:
Oops, thanks for pointing that out! I did this late last night, not my best time of day for noticing links -_-.
~Cassie
So glad you loved it!
crichoux reply on March 13th, 2008:
One of these days, I will hate a book you love, and then there shall be war! ^_^
Thank you for the delightful review–and the extras! I’m off to check out that woolen mill video! ~ecb
crichoux reply on March 13th, 2008:
Oops, the link was slightly messed up for the video. It had some extra characters at the end. All fixed now though. -_- I don’t know if you found the original page, but if you did, was the video/mill a lot like Charlottes? From the descriptions, it seemed to be around the right time period and types of machinary.
From the video that I saw, it looks like it’s a little bit later, but the carding engines were *very* similar. I’ve seen them up close and personal–that so-called carding “cloth” that combs the wool fibers smooth is made up of hundreds of razor-sharp wires….
~ecb
crichoux reply on March 13th, 2008:
Yeah, I thought it might be a bit later, but it was the best photos/video/information that I could find. If you know of any other websites with good information on woolen mills, I’d be happy to post links.
Some of us aren’t so lucky as to see those things up close ^_^ … Though all I can think is, “Wow, wouldn’t want to get my arm stuck in that…” I remember reading the American Girl books about Samantha, and she had a friend who worked in one of those turn of the century factories, and the friend would tell all the horrible things that happened to girls there, getting arms, hair, stuck in machines and the like.
Carding mills don’t seem to have changed a lot from the 18th to the 19th centuries, except for the power source. That Michigan mill looks a lot like the one at Old Sturbridge Village, where I used to work - there’s a bit about it here from the OSV web page:
http://www.osv.org/explore_learn/waterpower/carding.html
Much easier than carding the wool by hand, I can tell you that!
It was so much fun reading Elizabeth’s book and remembering all the wool processing stuff we used to do at the Village, though at OSV only the carding part of the process was mechanized and we could only talk about the weaving and spinning mills in bigger towns like Lowell–you’d have to go the the National Park there to see the big looms in action.
I used to do weaving and spinning and wool dyeing at OSV, which I loved (that made Mr. Mordant a really special character for me!), although I was never all that good at the spinning part. Spring was always so much fun with all the little lambs hopping around like they were pop-up toys with springs in their feet.
M.P. Barker
A DIFFICULT BOY
Holiday House, April 2008
http://www.mpbarker.net
http://www.classof2k8.com
crichoux reply on March 22nd, 2008:
I didn’t think it had chanted too much. Why change a process thats working? ^_^
I’ve never gotten to to spinning and such really, but it seems like it would be fun, at leat for the first ten minutes!