Teen Reviews presents book reviews and recommendations from teens in Mesa County. Don’t be surprised if you can’t find some of the books mentioned in these posts at the library or in stores: teens who attend Teen Book Club on Wednesdays at 4:00 at the Central Library have access to books before they are officially published.
Trumbo, Dalton. Eclipse.
Dalton Trumbo’s Eclipse is a book about a small city named Shale City and a man named John Abbott, but you’ll notice a few similarities to Grand Junction as you read. This is because Shale City is Grand Junction! Dalton Trumbo grew up in Grand Junction and as you read Eclipse you’ll see all sorts of references to it’s real life counterpart such as Main Street, Lincoln Park Moyer Pool, and Enstrom’s.
The book is about real life store owner and the man who half the town owed money to, W.J Moyer (named John Abbott in the book). John Abbott is the most generous man you could meet, with the book starting out in 1929 with the growing success of his business and the overall growth of the town. Sadly, John Abbott’s years of comfort and generosity catch up with him, and his life of comfort and happiness slowly go down the drain with affairs, death, blackmail, and The Great Depression hit John Abbott like a truck.
Full of real life, once living people, Eclipse is sort of like “The Help” where Dalton Trumbo changed the names, and some of the stories were true. I love this book because I can find all sorts of cool history of Grand Junction, and researching this history is fun and really shows how our town used to be.
One Fun Fact about Eclipse is that Eclipse was banned in Grand Junction when it was first published, as people started realizing the similarities to family members or even themselves. There are rumors of people burning the books in a bonfire, but they cannot confirm these claims. Being published in 1935 it can be a little dull at times, but it keeps you grasped with Dalton Trumbo’s brilliant skill of taking real life and converting it to ink and paper. Sometimes it can feel like you’re reading someone play The Sims but they are really bad at it, but those parts are short and don’t hinder the book in any way.
I would definitely recommend this book to a history buff, but anyone can enjoy it as well. It is available at our library (the waiting list can be very long, when I first tried to get it, it had 147 people in front of me or something like that). Overall, amazing book, and Dalton Trumbo is a remarkably interesting, and his life is definitely one to research and learn from.
Rating: 4
-Bryan, Grade 10
Rating System:
5: Hard to imagine a better book
4: Better than most
3: Readable
2: Needs work
1: How did it ever get published?