Amy watched as Malcolm stared back at his father with a look of naked hostility. Malcolm wouldn’t be nine years old forever, she reflected. He wouldn’t always be smaller than his father. She studied Malcolm’s expression more closely, and a cold knot formed in the pit of her stomach as she realised that Malcolm was thinking exactly the same thing.
Amy watches in growing fear the worsening confrontation between her husband and her son, until she realises that only one of them can survive it. How long can she keep them apart?
Settling the Account is the final book in the three-volume saga Promises to Keep. It follows directly on from Book Two, Mud and Gold.
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By Karen Robinson
Sep 11, 2009
"A page-turner!" Promises to Keep is actually one long novel, published in three volumes, set in New Zealand in the late 1800s. If you read the first volume, you're going to want to read all three. Because of that, I'm going to comment on each volume separately, but I'm also going to make some remarks about the work as a whole that I'll include in each review. Settling the Account In the final volume of the trilogy, some of the younger generation begin to grow up, and Amy's story reaches a satisfying resolution. This volume is especially a page-turner. I stayed up late at night and got up early because I wanted to find out what was going to happen next! General comments on the work as the whole: As a person who lives almost exactly halfway around the world from New Zealand, I found this story fascinating. The characters are compelling and the plot is a page-turner. But I also was really interested in the local and historical flavor. In some ways the lives of the characters... More > are similar to what they would have been in my part of the world at the same time in history. But the local flora and fauna are so different. The cows get into "tutu" for example, instead of the locoweed I'm used to. And the language is so interesting. People "go crook" and "sort out" other people. I understand that the author went to some trouble to make sure the language was current for the time. The historical setting is interesting too. At the beginning of the story, women have no rights at all. Even in a good marriage, a husband is expected to "sort out" his wife, meaning slap her around a bit. But during the course of the story, women gain the right to vote (and the voting officials won't let the husbands into the booths with their wives, which causes a lot of consternation.) The younger generation of women are more independent and outspoken, which adds to the pleasure of reading the story. The writing is very cinematic; you can "see" everything clearly. The first part of the story is pretty grim; the characters go through some tough times. But if you read all the way to the end, there is an enormously satisfying ending. It's not necessarily a fairy-tale happy-ever-after ending, but there's a turn of joy that is -- perfect. If you see it coming ahead of time, that only adds to the pleasure when it finally occurs.< Less
The final story in the Promises to Keep trilogy does justice to the series' name: it lives up to the promise shown in the first and second books, bringing the story to a satisfying and realistic conclusion. Parkinson manages to hold together threads of several minor storylines as well as the major ones, allowing the reader to find out what happens with things we see in the first book without having to pause to remember them. If you are looking for a story of sacrifice, love, and redemption, this is the trilogy for you.
