Ashes of Roses
Madeline M.
The book Ashes of Roses, written by Mary Jane Auch, is a very heart filled book that shows the life of one family coming to America from Ireland. It shows every little thing people had to go through and what they had to face when they wanted to come into America. Ashes of Roses shows the happy, sad and even frustrating times that they had to go through. A good part about this book was that it had a lot of information on how people had to get in America and how they tried to fit in and live in America.
I really don’t suggest Ashes of Roses because it is very sad and shows hard struggles for this family. If you do like sad stories that end up having a good ending, then I suggest this book, and Ashes of Roses has lots of detail on the disturbing parts. I didn’t really enjoy this book because most of the book was pretty boring, except for two parts where there was action and you couldn’t predict what was going to happen next. I really only like books with action and you can’t predict what is going to happen next, so this book is definitely not for me.
One thing that I found kind of interesting was that there was tons of information about moving to America and how you have to live when you have nothing. These characters had no idea what was going to happen to them or what was ahead of them, but they just kept going with their heads high. Ashes of Roses gave information about the move for people from countries to America, it shows how unaware about how different it was going to be to move, and it shows the different lifestyles of people from America and people from other countries.
Another thing that I did enjoy from Ashes of Roses was all of the characters. All of them had their own personalities and every single one of them was different even if they were related. My favorite character was the main character, Rose, because she had the most personality; she wasn’t afraid to speak out or tell people what she thinks. She was brave, sensitive, caring and I think that she was the most unique out of all the characters. This book shows how she acted, lived, how she was treated, and what kind of difference America had on her. Some other characters that were some of my favorites were; Gussie, (Roses friend) because she stood up for the people that weren’t brave enough to, I also liked Maureen (Roses little sister) because she could take a terrible day and turn it in to a happy great day, and finally I liked the character Mr. Garoff (The man she was renting the room from) because he protected Rose and Maureen like they were his daughters, when he really didn’t have to.
Over all I don’t recommend this book if you like exciting, entertaining books, books that you don’t know what will happen next. If you like boring, educational books that have information and stories of people’s lives, then Ashes of Roses is a book for you. There are the very reasons I do and don’t recommend this book to you.
“Gussie Garoff, Rose Klein, Rose Bellini, and all the others were silent now, so it was up to girls like me to make sure they weren’t forgotten. There was a lot that needed to be said about what happened at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. And I was going to tell everyone who would listen.”
~ Mary Jane Auch, Ashes of Roses
