MY THOUGHTS:
We have a new author picking up the slack with this twelfth Glad Book. Virginia May Moffitt does a nice job of weaving in threads left dangling by other authors, most recently Margaret Piper Chalmers.
This is a post-WW2 tale, and all the male family members have survived combat, which we'd surely hope, being a Glad book. Pollyanna and her daughter, Ruth, are heading to Palm City, Rio Grande Valley, Texas, where they plan to join newlyweds, Jim Junior and Rosemary. Jimmy Senior, aka the Chief, is already there with the young couple. Many of their close neighbours are Latin American, and the story highlights plenty of inter-racial prejudice.
Jim Junior has picked up a very cool contract taking promo photos of the region. He's lucky to land a plum job in line with his passion. The problem is that rental properties are as scarce as hen's teeth. The Pendletons manage to make a contract with Nelson Kipps, a chilly and brusque old man who owns a derelict property where his heart was once broken. The catch is, it's rumoured to be haunted. Strange lights bob up and down behind shaded windows at night. And when our family of five move in, bumps and thumps are added to the mix.
Once again, the Pendleton family's total scepticism of the supernatural surprises me. They dismiss any possibility of spiritual or ghostly input as impossible. If any occurrence falls outside the limited evidence of their five senses... well, they refuse to let it fall outside. They have to jam it into their explainable worldview somehow, and the author, Moffitt, gives the Pendleton family the logical explanation they demand.
I tend to keep a far more open mind than these characters, and give the supernatural realm the respect it deserves. There is surely far more depth to the goings on in our vast cosmos than meets the eye.
One thing is certain. If I'd seen eerie lights inside a supposedly empty old house with a spooky reputation, I would have abandoned all ideas of wanting to rent it. Surely that's not just me being chicken hearted.
I think the Pendletons have idealized expectations about the rental market too. They consider Mr Kipps to be mean and churlish when he agrees to rent his old house to them with stipulations. He insists on locking some expensive antique furniture items up in the attic and denying them access. Come on Pendletons, I did the rental shuffle-around for years, and this is all part and parcel of the lifestyle. If they consider Mr Kipps to be ungenerous then so are many landlords and landladies I've rented from. In fact, I have far worse stories. You gotta just suck it up. People tend to be very precious with their own property.
Although Pollyanna's name is on the cover, our touchstone character is often eighteen-year-old Ruth, who is a refreshing heroine. She combines Pollyanna's sunny friendliness with Jimmy's frank practicality. I think her tendency to flare up with righteous temper is also from her dad, and her brother shares the same trait. Throughout the series, Ruth has been used to being overshadowed by her prettier sister, Judy, and now it's her gorgeous sister-in-law, Rosemary. Nothing has really changed, but she never lets comparisons with these more conventional beauties get her down.
BTW, Judy and her husband, Ron, live far away, but the others miss her badly and write lots of letters.
Several other teenagers feature in this story, including Mr Kipps' musical granddaughter, Barbara, whose life Ruth saves on the very first page of this book. There is also a proud girl named Susan who has a knack for interior design, and several boys who Moffitt presumably added to appeal to her female teenage market, but these fellows tend to blur into one.
Interesting details include severe blows to the citrus industry when the mercury plummets down below zero. The Aussie orange crops I'm used to never contend with such severe cold snaps. And the family owns a Morris chair, which is a type of recliner invented by William Morris, the textile and wallpaper legend. When I googled them they looked familiar, but I had no idea that's what they're called.
Hey, anyone who's into fashion parades may enjoy one particular thread with dresses made out of fruit and vegetables.
Moffitt, for the most part, uses her setting to complement her plot, rather than dumping huge gluts of description just for the sake of it, ȧ la Elizabeth Borton. I find the amazing HEAs a bit too pat and forced, and the eventual solution of the mystery turns out to be far more weird and unlikely than plain old ghosts, in my opinion. I still quite enjoyed this story. After all, we have Pollyanna and Jimmy in their early fifties, sharing a haunted house with their adult kids! That premise alone hooked me from the start. What would Eleanor H. Porter have thought if she imagined where other authors would take her little glad girl?
🌟🌟🌟½
I'm nervous to see Elizabeth Borton's name back on the next book, Pollyanna and the Secret Mission. Having passed on the baton, she now picks it back up again. Come on lady, you wanted out! Oh well, I'll soon see what it's like.
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