The book, A Gathering of Days, had three main characters:
Catherine, Cassie, and Asa.
Catherine was the girl that the book was about. She
was a girl of thirteen who's mother had died when she was five. She had two
sisters: Mary-Martha, and Mattie. She, her siblings, and her father lived in an
old home in New Hampshire. After a business trip her father had taken, he
married a women he met on his business trip.
Cassie was Catherine's best friend. They went to school together, played
together, and went to church together. Cassie had three brothers: Asa, David,
and little Willie.
Asa was of Cassie's brothers that played with Catherine,
too. Cassie was his only sister.
These three characters lived in New Hampshire. The time
period that the book was recorded in was in the 1830's. Women and girls wore
dresses and bonnets. Men and boys wore pants. Each night, Catherine's father
would read to them the family bible, which was the custom then.
The main thing that Catherine struggled with in the book
was death. After Catherine's mother died, she had to do all the things her
mother used to do, such as making her family meals, mending clothes, cleaning
the house, tucking the younger children in at night, and, she had school to do. When her father re-married, Catherine did not adjust well. Her stepmother
was a good women, but she dressed differently from what the people in
Catherine's town did, she brought loads of new furniture from her old home in,
and spoke slightly different then what Catherine was used to. It was also
challenging for Catherine because her stepmother brought her son with her.
After a time, Catherine began to spend more time with her "new"
family, and it wasn't as hard as she thought it would be to have a
"new' mother and brother. Another conflict was, that, after Catherine went
swimming, in the summer, with Cassie, Cassie began to complain that she was
very cold. When Cassie went home, she fell ill. She was sick for quite some
time, then, she died. Catherine was alone and without a friend, but, soon
afterward, her aunt became pregnant, and was soon to have a child. She asked
Catherine to come and move away to help with the baby. Catherine accepted, and
was able to cope with her sadness more so. That is how the book ended.
Even though this wasn't my favorite book, it was still a good one. The
lesson I learned from this book would be that, even though trials come, there will always be hope.
