Pressed Pennies Author: Steven Manchester Reviewer: Sonali T. Sikchi Publisher: Unpublished, Represented by Sunpiper Literary Agency Format: Adult, Fiction Rating: * * * * Quills   Pressed Pennies follows three generations of families set against the harshly beautiful country landscape of Montana. Familial love and family life form the central core around which this evocative work revolves.   From the first paragraph, Steven Manchester hooks you on to his story. He has a way with presenting his characters that make them feel like real people right from outset. With his persuasive prose, he makes you care about these proud, ambitious people whose strength of character sees them through strife and struggles.   Every human emotion is given restrained rein in this story, and it is enlightening to see how each person's personality affects how they react to different emotions, and how their subsequent behavior in turn causes their personality to shift and change. As the characters grow emotionally and spiritually, so does the complexity of the dilemmas they have to face.   When talking about family, Manchester doesn't narrowly focus on the traditional family — father, mother, brother, sister — but instead tackles single parenthood and other current family situations. Accelerating technological innovations have pushed us humans into the leftmost lane, rushing here and there, trying to cram more and more into our daily allotment of 24 hours. Kids are rushed from one activity to another with no downtime in between. Family dinners have become a luxury instead of the way things should be. And Manchester finally asks, "Did the American family have to be traded in to experience the American dream...?" In the pursuit of a chimera, we have forgotten the core that sustains us, that will stand by us in trouble and that will succor us in grief. And in doing so, we have become vulnerable, where even a soft blow can shatter us.

 

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