Creator
Linda Crew
American novelist whose young adult novel Children of the River follows a Cambodian refugee teenager in Oregon.
Linda Crew is an American author from Corvallis, Oregon, whose first novel, Children of the River (1989), follows a Cambodian refugee girl in Oregon.[1][2] She lives on a small farm in Corvallis.[1][3] Her books range from children's stories to young adult historical novels, adult fiction and memoir.[1][4]
Career
Crew attended Lewis and Clark College and graduated from the University of Oregon, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1973.[3] At the university she moved from theater to journalism, a training in interviewing, research and marketing. Her assignments were always full of dialogue, and she felt the urge "to make a story just a little better than the way it happened."[2]
After Children of the River she wrote Someday I'll Laugh About This (1990) and the children's books Nekomah Creek (1991) and Nekomah Creek Christmas (1994).[1] Ordinary Miracles, a novel for adults, was published by William Morrow in 1993.[1][3] Her young adult historical novels include Fire on the Wind (1995), Long Time Passing (1997), Brides of Eden: A True Story Imagined (2001) and A Heart for Any Fate: Westward to Oregon 1845 (2005).[1] A Heart for Any Fate won the 2005 Oregon Book Award and the Willa Literary Award.[1][5] Her later books are the memoirs Accidental Addict: A True Story of Pain and Healing (2016), about the dangers of prescribed drugs, and Wedding in Yangshuo (2017), and the novel Family Trees: A Novel of the Northwest (2021), set in Corvallis in 2009.[1][5]
Children of the River
The idea for the novel came when a family of Cambodian refugees came to work on Crew's farm at harvest time.[3] She spent a year researching Cambodian history and interviewing Cambodian immigrants before she began the first draft. Sundara, the main character, was drawn from many Cambodian teenagers Crew met, not from one person.[6][7] Crew wanted to help teenagers understand the political unrest in Cambodia and how hard it can be to become part of American culture.[6]
At thirteen, Sundara flees the Khmer Rouge with her aunt's family and leaves her parents, brother and sister behind. In Oregon she struggles to fit in at high school and to be "a good Cambodian girl" at home, and she is drawn to an American boy, Jonathan.[8] Bantam Doubleday Dell published the novel in New York in 1989.[7] It was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, won the International Reading Association Children's Book Award and was a Golden Kite Honor Book of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.[8][7]
Recognition
Crew has received the IRA Children's Book Award and the SCBWI Golden Kite Award, and her books have been named ALA Notables and ALA Best Books.[2]
Works
- Children of the River (Book)
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Linda Crew, Wikipedia
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Penguin Random House, Linda Crew author page
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Teacher's Pet Publications, Children of the River novel unit (sample, PDF)
- ↑ Linda Crew, official site, bio
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Linda Crew, official site
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Children of the River, What Inspired the Author?
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Children of the River, Wikipedia
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Penguin Books Australia, Children of the River