The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen

The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen by Geraldine McCaughrean is the sequel to Stop That Train but it can read as a stand alone. Cissy and some of her Olive, Oklahoma classmates are sent to the care of their former school teacher during a diphtheria outbreak.

The cover art depicts a fairly early scene in the book, the arrival of the children to the paddle wheel. It washed ashore in a disused pasture where it has lain unclaimed. The acting troop is hiding out there while they try to figure out how to get one of their actors out of jail on an obscenity charge (for quoting Shakespeare).

Most of the book, though, have adventures along the Missouri river. The humor relies on an ensemble cast of unusual characters, outlandish but still somewhat plausible situations and a wild and oft-times dangerous setting.

The timing of the story is never completely pinned down but there are enough hints to place it with in the last decade of the 19th century. The two biggest clues are the off handed comment that the last time a judge had shown up was 1891 and the fact that Queen Victoria is still the reigning monarch of United Kingdom.

Although The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen starts slow and has a large enough cast to require its own dramatis personae broken up by section, it ends up being a very entertaining turn of the century romp. I am now planning to go back and read Stop That Train. ( )

When a diphtheria outbreak forces twelve-year-old Cissy to leave her Oklahoma hometown in the 1890s, she and her two classmates embark on a wild adventure down the Missouri River with a team of traveling actors who are living on a dilapidated paddle steamer. ( )

Out of prarie desperation tumble the most amusing predicaments you've read in ages! It's like Mark Twain for kids.

Cissy Sissney lives in the prairie railroad stop of Olive Town, circa 1890. Since her beloved teacher, Miss Loucien left town with The Bright Lights, a traveling theater group, life hasn't been the same.

"Beyond the window, a great tidal wave of Boredom rolled in from the eastern horizon, then broke over the school roofs and Main Street and the silo and the umbrella factory before rolling on to the western horizon. Cissy knew the color of boredom; it was the color of prairie. It was the color of northwest Oklahoma. It was the color of schoolday afternoons. Sometimes she thought they sky had been nailed down on Olive Town like a crate lid and that she was suffocating on Boredom."

And things were about to get worse. School might be boring, but at least she had friends there, including her best friend, Habakkuk (Kookie) Warboys. Now her mother wanted her to give up school, work full time in the family shop. Her father's

"heart ached for his little girl whose life had suddenly shrunk in the wash from a costume gown into a shopgirl's apron."

But life has a way of changing the best laid plans. A runaway silo accident (!) destroys Cissy's family's store and severely injures her father. To make matters worse, there is a diphtheria outbreak in Olive Town. Soon Cissy, Kookie, and the beautiful Tibbie Bolden, find themselves in the care of their prim and proper new schoolteacher, Miss May March. All are bound for refuge in Salvation - the town of Salvation, that is, current and temporary home of Mrs. Lucien Shades Crew and the Bright Lights Theater Company - at least until they can get Curly out of jail.

The Bright Lights Theater Company, currently residing in a grounded paddle wheeler, takes a highly unanticipated journey downriver, meeting up with actors, entertainers, gamblers, rogues - a complete cast of "characters!" And subject to their many unexpected situations, they become in turn The Bright Lights Theater & Shipwrecking Company, The Bright Lights Theater & Funeral Company, and The Bright Lights Theater, Last Ditch & Final Curtain Company. The Bright Lights "family" takes it all in stride. As Henry, the Bright Lights' English butler reminds Cissy,

"Yesterday I was a butler, Miss Cecelia. Today I seem to be the Prime Minister of England, ... Sometimes life has a way of asking us to take a step up."

And step up they do! To the direst, funniest, most improbable situations that might be found on a dilapidated paddle steamer plying the 1890 Numchuck River, calling on such colorful ports as Salvation, Patience, Plenty, Woodpile, Blowville, and Boats-a-Cummin.

The Glorious Adventure of the Sunshine Queen is not for the reluctant reader; the reader who struggles with contextual clues. Rather, it is for the reader who glories in wordplay, colorful language, and magnificent adventures. Ms. McCaughrean does not stop to ensure that the reader has "gotten," the joke (and there are many!), she keeps on moving, toward greater exploits downriver. Get ready to be swept away from Salvation to Golden Bend on an exuberant trip with the Bright Lights!
Highly recommended.

The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen is a sequel to the 2005 novel, Stop the Train. I've never read Stop the Train, having only recently become a huge fan of Ms. McCaughrean after reading The Death-Defying Pepper Roux (my favorite book of 2010). I slipped easily onto the fictional Numchuck River, however, without the benefit of the Train.
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