Polly Brewster #2, Polly and Eleanor

In the last book, Polly and Eleanor discover a long-lost gold mine. In this book, it's buried by an avalanche in the opening chapters. However, they don't give up hope of its being accessed, which conveniently allows Lillie to add in brother John, his attractive friend, Tom Latimer, his younger brother Jim, and Kenneth Evans, who is both working for a mining company with Jim and the (spoiler) nephew of the dead man who originally found the mine. Phew. I would have tried to explain this all more in the last review if I'd known they all crop up again.

Polly wants to access the mine because she wants money to go away to school. Her family's filthy rich, but her father is too desperately attached to his precious widdle Polly to allow her to leave the ranch. He also won't allow these beautiful glitter cliffs by the ranch house to be mined to finance the gold mine--again, to keep her at home. I'm really hating Mr. Brewster at this point. Fortunately, Nolla is over this ridiculosity and is a master planner.

Nolla (a.) gets her father to come to the ranch, hoping his bank will invest in the mine and that he'll let her go to New York with Anne, who's been offered a job in a girls' seminary, (b.) gets her mother to invite Bob to some posh camp-out, aka out of the way. Ken aids and abets by sending stones from the cliff to his father, who's invented some special polishing tool, and getting him to come out, too. Polly manages to aid her own cause by giving this impassioned speech on Girls of Today and needing to Experience the World and get an Education. If you need a hint on how all this turns out, the next book in the series is Polly in New York.

This book has ridiculous amounts of romance. Sary and Jeb get engaged, as do John and Anne. Anne's got to work the next two years, to put her brother through college (he's too proud to take John's money, but not too proud to let his sister "loan" him money from teaching school?), but then they'll be together. Until then, I suspect Polly and Nolla will have grand adventures under Anne's chaperonage. Polly and Nolla mostly hang with Ken and Jim, who I estimate at around 18 or so--one year of college under their belts, plus the last book guesses Ken to be this age. John and Tom are older, probably more in the 19-20 range, with two years to go of school, for the record. While I get some slight romantic vibes from Nolla and Ken, Tom has got it bad for the always-oblivious Polly--which Nolla is both amused by and encourages. I goofed and read a review for the final book, Polly Learns to Fly, and while I won't completely spoil it for you, Tom is the love interest for the rest of the series.

It's hard to tell from my summary (SO MUCH to cram into a few paragraphs), but this book was good to great. Great while I was reading it, in that I steamrolled right through it, if the times on my posts didn't clue you in. I fully plan to go right into the next one, as well. Good in that writing my post revealed that the plot meanders a good bit and is pretty silly as well. It reminds me of the early Beverly Gray books or Patty Fairfield in that sense--each book has multiple consecutive plots, and it's more about a period of time than anything.

• This book has lots of unintentional ickiness. It probably speaks more about my juvenile sense of humor than anything, so I'll spare you most of it. Here's one example, though, Polly has "a graceful well-formed figure that was all the more attractive because of the charms her adolescence promised." *snickers about what charms we're speaking of* I told you it was silly. Sue me.
• In the beginning, there's an Indian scout. Who speaks exactly like a Chinese cook character. As in, "Patsy good scout, too. Solly dem dead." Since when can American Indians not make an "r" sound?
  
• Speaking of politically incorrect characters, there's a burro named N****r. Eek.
• Fashion: the boys are coming for Sunday dinner. "Eleanor had loaned Polly one of her prettiest organdies, and had arranged her really beautiful hair becomingly. Silk stockings now encased Polly's shapely limbs, and her new low shoes looked twice as well with the sheen of silk above them." (side note: more unintentional ickiness twinges)
• Bob, quite logically, tries to pair off with Tom, as they're the two loners in the crowd, and he's quite a catch. Unfortunately his opinion is, "Of all the empty-headed vain creatures it ever was my misfortune to meet, she takes the cake!"
• Polly and Nolla are the same age (14), while Bob is older. Apparently old enough to be "out," want to get married, and to think Jim is too young, so I estimate 19ish?
• I know the 14 year old Polly as a love object for 19 year old Tom should be considered gross/illegal by modern standards, but for some reason that doesn't generally bother me in old books. It actually does make me cringe a little in this case with all the references to her not precisely being post-pubescent.
• Nolla's long term plan for her and Polly: "We propose going to Europe to study Italian, French, Spanish, and English periods and styles. If we have an extra year or so, to spare, we might go to Japan and Egypt." Based on the titles, I'm guessing most of these end up coming true.
• Nolla's special failing is getting carried away and exaggerating, sometimes to the point of lies. Polly chews her out for this, and ends up reversing their position as friends--Polly becomes the leader. Honestly, this irked me, because I liked that the main character was the more passive one. Nolla and Mrs. Brewster are definitely my favorite characters, although I'd say that most characters are pretty likable.
  

Um, I'm going to wrap this up now, so that I can read the next book--a mark of a good book, no?