Ingrid Hill
Author of Ursula, Under
About the Author
Ingrid Hill has published short stories in a range of magazines and is the author of one collection, Dixie Church Interstate Blues. She earned her Ph.D. in English at the University of Iowa and has twice received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the mother of twelve children, show more including two sets of twins, and lives in Iowa City show less
Works by Ingrid Hill
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 20th century
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
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Statistics
- Works
- 2
- Also by
- 6
- Members
- 556
- Popularity
- #44,900
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 17
- ISBNs
- 8
The basic story line is that a two-year-old child, Ursula Wong, falls into an abandoned mine while on a holiday with her parents in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. While her parents wait for the rescue teams to organize and arrive at the remote location, and for the painstaking preparations they need to make to shore up the mine before attempting to go after the child, the author goes back in time to give us Ursula’s ancestry. The story line moves back and forth in time from the drama unfolding in Michigan to the 3rd century BC where we meet a Chinese alchemist, to 17th-century Europe, to Ursula’s great-grandfather who died in a mine collapse. Some of these stories were fascinating, others failed to capture my attention.
Hill does have some strikingly original and beautifully written passages in the book. And those fed my love of literary fiction and kept me turning pages, hoping for more of this. But, it was a slog to get through. It took me over a month to finish it, because I kept putting it aside for other books that required less brain power to enjoy. (I did have a number of other things on my plate which kept me from doing much reading, so it’s not entirely the book’s fault.)
So, while I appreciate the message that each of us owes much to our varied ancestry, the novel seemed bogged down by the complex structure and timeframe Hill chose for delivering her message.… (more)