The Shelby’s is a famous and very wealthy Jewish family, living in Canada. They have been living there all their lives. Lesley lives with her parents, Nat and Miriam Shelby. She also has an elder brother, Noah, who has been kicked out of the family by Nat, because of marrying a non-Jewish person. Nat owns a huge departmental store, passed down to him by his father. This is where all their wealth comes from.
Lynne Banks looks at the traumatic change that Lesley goes through. Nat has decided to leave their wealth and luxury in Canada to move to Israel. "We are going to emigrate", the words drops into Lesley's mind innocently ...and explodes like a bomb. Emigrating means leaving home forever. She couldn't believe it. But her father has made up his mind. “We’re going where we can live on an edge...without challenges, we rot, mind, soul and body.” Life at Kibbutz Kfar Orde in Israel turns out to be a great challenge indeed, for Lesley, who has always taken "the good life" for granted. At home she was popular, successful at school, and trendily dressed. Now it's all gone. A stranger in a strange land, she has to start from scratch, and that includes learning a new language, doing manual work and sharing sleeping quarters with three others - one of them a boy.
Lesley encounters many difficulties in making new friends. Lesley cannot accept them at first. Some of the children at the Kibbutz think that Lesley could not fit with them because they think she is rich and a stuck-up. She eventually makes friends with her roommate Shula, who becomes her best friend. “She was sure Shula would be mad at her—she had really chickened out—but instead, Shula cursed the mower” Later the rest of the Kitta began to accept her as one of them. They appreciated her teaching them English and they teaching her Hebrew in return. This bond is threatened when Lesley makes friends with an Arab boy across the river, in Jordan, enemy territory. The trust her friends have built with her was broken. All the Israeli children had a strong influence on Israel’s despise of the Arabs. They even hated learning their language.
With the approach of the six-day war, things got better. She got the shock of her life when she meets Noah. She feels like the luckiest girl on earth. “She started to tremble… she burst into tears”. Lynne Banks defines in this book that love cant be destroyed, even by the greatest force on earth. Who would think that war not only separates people, but reunites them as well. Noah has come to Israel as a volunteer soldier, and Nat has happily accepted him back into the family. Lesley is now no longer regretting coming to Israel. Now she sees what her father said. They are now living happily, as a family.
‘One More River’ is a truly great novel. Lynne Banks is able to portray very common dramatic conflicts and self-acclimatization. She presents her writing with a strong sense of reality. This book is a great read for anyone any age, who is interested in changes in life. The book is really interesting. It makes you think and decide which is more important: religion or culture?
