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A NORTHERN LIGHT

Page history last edited by RichiesPicks 14 years, 7 months ago

20 August 2002  A NORTHERN LIGHT by Jennifer Donnelly, Harcourt, April 2003

 

I know! I know! Here I am, still on my 2002 summer vacation, and rather than talkin' back-to-school highlights, I'm about to go off and tell you about the first "biggie" of 2003. A NORTHERN LIGHT by Jennifer Donnelly should hit the shelves just in time for Spring Break and the Easter Bunny.

 

But if you're fortunate enough to either attend a regional trade show this fall, NCTE, or ALA Midwinter, then it is imperative that you keep your eyes peeled for the advance copies of this one.

 

A NORTHERN LIGHT is a great coming of age story that provides serious fodder for discussing women's history in America, and which wraps itself around the sensational, true murder mystery that rocked the Adirondacks just months after San Francisco was rocked by the big quake of 1906.

 

"The main house has four stories plus an attic. Forty rooms in all. When the hotel is fully booked, as it is this week, there are often over a hundred people in the building. All strangers to one another, coming and going. Eating and laughing and breathing and sleeping and dreaming under the same roof.

"They leave things behind sometimes, the guests. A bottle of scent. A crumpled handkerchief. A pearl button that fell off a dress and rolled under a bed. And sometimes they leave other sorts of things. Things you can't see. A sigh trapped in a corner. Memories tangled in the curtains. A sob fluttering against a windowpane like a bird that flew in and can't get back out. I can feel these things. They dart and crouch and whisper.

"I get to the bottom of the staircase and listen. The only sound is the ticking of the clock. To my right is the dining room. It's dark and empty. Straight ahead, through the porch windows, I can see the boathouse and the lake, calm and still, its black surface silvered by the moon. I pray I don't run into anyone. Not Mrs. Morrison waiting up for her husband. Or Mr. Sperry doing the accounts as he does when he can't sleep. Or, God forbid, table six lurking in a corner like some horrible spider.

"I walk under the antler chandelier in the foyer, and by the coat tree made of branches and deer hooves. I pass the hallway that leads to the parlor and get a fright when I see light spilling out of the room onto the hall carpet, but then I remember: That's where Grace Brown is laid out. Mrs. Morrison left a lamp burning because it's unkind to leave the dead all alone in the dark. They have darkness enough ahead of them."

  

Our narrator is sixteen-year-old Mattie (Mathilda) Gokey, who has just snuck out of the attic where the young female employees sleep. Grace Brown is the unfortunate, young, dead woman who is about to cause a sensation. She was just discovered, along with an overturned canoe, after she and her male companion failed to return to the resort hotel for supper.

Shortly before the events that befell her, Grace had slipped a packet of letters to Mattie, and had instructed her to burn them.

Like Mattie doesn't have enough problems already! After her mother died and her brother split town following an altercation with their angry father, unpleasant Pa makes it clear that Mattie's priority is to help run the farm and raise her three younger sisters. But Mattie is a gifted writer and passionate scholar who is determined to earn her high school diploma and surreptitiously longs to hoard sufficient money to leave town herself--for a college education in turn of the century New York City. Her accomplice is a neighbor, a black kid named Weaver, who is also a brilliant scholar and whose own dream is to somehow make it through law school and avenge some of the really bad stuff he's seen go down.

 

It's hard enough trying to battle ignorance in 2002! It'll drive you crazy watching and listening to several of these bossy (dare I say stupid) white men from a hundred years ago. And then to also watch Mattie in her weaker moments, battling her raging hormones, is almost too much to bear.

 

Author Jennifer Donnelly deftly juggles all of these issues, along with the murder of Grace Brown, as we nervously root for Mattie to somehow make it through those minefields without detonating another foolish male character or her equally foolish Aunt Josie. Young adult readers will so easily relate to Mattie and Weaver despite their having lived a hundred years ago. That Ms. Donnelly is able to achieve this while staying so consistent to the historic fictional setting makes A NORTHERN LIGHT a story that will be enjoyed by historic and contemporary fiction aficionados alike.

 

Richie Partington

http://richiespicks.com

BudNotBuddy@aol.com

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