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Summary
Summary
Sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey has a word for everything, and big dreams but little hope of seeing them come true. She collects words, stores them up as a way of fending off the hard truths of her life, the truths that she can't write down in stories.The fresh pain of her mother's death. The burden of raising her sisters while her father struggles over his brokeback farm. The mad welter of feelings Mattie has for handsome but dull Royal Loomis, who says he wants to marry her. And the secret dreams that keep her going--visions of finishing high school, going to college in New York City, becoming a writer.Desperate for money, she takes a job at the Glenmore, where hotel guest Grace Brown entrusts her with the task of burning a secret bundle of letters. But when Grace's drowned body is fished from Big Moose Lake, Mattie discovers that the letters could reveal the grim truth behind a murder.Set in 1906 in the Adirondack Mountains, against the backdrop of the murder that inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, this Printz Honor-winning coming-of-age novel effortlessly weaves romance, history, and a murder mystery into something moving, and real, and wholly original.
Author Notes
Jennifer Donnelly was born in Port Chester, New York in 1963. She majored in English literature and European history at the University of Rochester. Her books for adults include The Tea Rose, The Winter Rose, and The Wild Rose. She is also the author of a picture book for children entitled Humble Pie and several young adult novels including Revolution and These Shallow Graves. A Northern Light was awarded Britain's Carnegie Medal, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction, and a Michael L. Printz Honor.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-Letters connected with a tragic drowning in 1906 inspired Jennifer Donnelly to write A Northern Light (Harcourt, 2003), a contemporary story about a young woman struggling to fulfill her dreams and commitments. Seventeen-year-old Mattie Gokey yearns to write stories with the new words she learns each day, but a promise to her dying mother has left her caring for her father and three sisters. She's also torn between the handsome neighbor who has asked her to marry him and a feisty black youth, her intellectual soulmate, who urges her to go to New York City where they both have college scholarships. Mattie is forced to confront all her choices as she reads a stack of letters entrusted to her by a female guest at the hotel where she works. Later, the guest is found floating dead in a nearby lake. Hope Davis narrates the novel's intense and humorous moments with equal veracity. She is especially skilled at bringing to life the hotel's Irish cook and Mattie's French Canadian uncle. A Northern Light is a treasure trove of richly resonant descriptions of people, place, and feelings. This recording will be one that listeners return to, and it will be a valuable addition to both school and public library collections.-Barbara Wysocki, Cora J. Belden Library, Rocky Hill, CT(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Donnelly's (The Tea Rose) riveting first novel for young adults, like Dreiser's An American Tragedy, was inspired by the Chester Gillette case. Narrated by 16-year-old Mattie, who works at the Glenmore Hotel on Big Moose Lake, the book begins on Thursday, July 12, 1906, the day a search party discovers the drowned body of Grace Brown, a hotel guest. Earlier that day, Grace had given to Mattie a bundle of letters to burn, her correspondence with Gillette. As the mystery behind Grace's death unfolds, flashback chapters fill in details of Mattie's life on her family's farm. Each begins with her "word of the day," which firmly establishes Mattie's love of language and which ties in with the unfolding events. Readers soon discover that her teacher considers Mattie to be a gifted writer and, at the woman's urging, Mattie applies to Barnard College and receives a full scholarship. But as the oldest daughter of a widowed father, Mattie feels an obligation to stay on the farm, and her budding romance with handsome Royal Loomis adds further complications. Each character contributes to the narrator's growing awareness of the narrow possibilities available to women at the turn of the 20th century. Her friendships with Weaver (the only other student with college aspirations, as well as the only African-American boy in their town) and her teacher (who has a secret of her own) are especially well realized. The author's ability to recast the murder mystery as a cautionary tale for Mattie makes the heroine's pending decision about her future the greatest source of suspense. Ages 12-up. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(High School) Sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey's dilemma is a familiar one, in life and in literature. Should she stay put in the insular community where she has always lived and become a wife and mother, or should she strike out for the freedom and intellectual stimulation of the big city? The twist here is that a murder helps Mattie make up her mind. Set in upstate New York in 1906, this ambitious historical novel incorporates a real-life crime, the widely publicized drowning of a pregnant young woman by the father of her unborn child--the same crime that inspired Dreiser's An American Tragedy. Readers expecting a mystery won't find it in Donnelly's story of a girl caught between feminism and obligation; the murder really just serves as a dramatic, albeit rather heavy-handed, wake-up call. The sweeping first-person narrative shifts back and forth between the day the drowned woman's body is discovered and the months leading up to this gruesome event. The flashback chapters all lead off with a different ""word of the day,"" which Mattie pulls from the dictionary in an attempt to keep her mind active while she's waiting on guests at the Adirondack hotel where she works or pleading with her family's obstinate mule to pull the plow. Pointedly drawn characters reflect the limited choices available to women of that era. Mattie can either marry a local farm boy or go to college, but she can't do both; and, as various individuals around her demonstrate, each scenario has its drawbacks. While it may seem obvious to us twenty-first-century types that Mattie, an avid reader and writer, should go the more modern route, Donnelly manages to make her narrator's conflict feel real. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Donnelly combines a mystery with a coming-of-age story about a girl choosing among family obligations, romance, and education. The mystery derives from a true event, the death in 1906 of a young woman in northern New York. In this fictional rendition, 16-year-old farm girl Mattie Gokey is working for the summer at the hotel where the murdered woman has been staying and has given Mattie letters to burn. As the details emerge about the possible murder, Mattie struggles with whether to burn the letters or turn them over to the police. She also wrestles with a deathbed promise to her mother to stay and raise her younger siblings. Mattie, who loves language and excels at creative writing, longs to go to New York City for college, encouraged by a feminist schoolteacher. The story's structure reflects the two promises at issue, with chapters narrated in present tense set at the hotel during the summer and chapters in past tense set during the preceding year when her mother died. The chapters from the past take their headings from new words Mattie is learning from her dictionary, a device that grows a bit tedious, as do the myriad details about the farming life. Issues about racism and women's rights are more deftly woven into the action. While tighter writing would have enhanced the work, this is nevertheless an absorbing story that will appeal strongly to the growing number of historical fiction fans. (Historical fiction. 12+) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 10-12. Donnelly's first YA novel begins with high drama drawn straight from history: Grace Brown's body is discovered, and her murder, which also inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, is the framework for this ambitious, beautifully written coming-of-age story set in upstate New York in 1906. Sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey is a waitress at the Glenmore Hotel when Brown is murdered. As she learns Brown's story, her narrative shifts between the goings-on at the hotel and her previous year at home: her toil at the farm; her relationship with her harsh, remote father; her pain at being forbidden to accept a college scholarship. "Plain and bookish," Mattie is thrilled about, but wary of, a handsome neighbor's attentions, and she wonders if she must give up her dream of writing if she marries. In an intelligent, colloquial voice that speaks with a writer's love of language and an observant eye, Mattie details the physical particulars of people's lives as well as deeper issues of race, class, and gender as she strains against family and societal limitations. Donnelly adds a crowd of intriguing, well-drawn secondary characters whose stories help Mattie define her own desires and sense of self. Many teens will connect with Mattie's deep yearning for independence and for stories, like her own, that are frank, messy, complicated, and inspiring. GillianEngberg.