A Northern Light

A Northern Light
By Jennifer Donnelly
Harcourt,Inc., 2003. 389 pgs. Young Adult

Mattie Gokey has the talent to be a writer and a scholarship to help her go to college. However, with her mother dead, her father needs her to help with her younger sisters and the farm in the Adirondack region of New York. Neighbor boy Royal Loomis, handsome but uninterested in books, further complicates things for Mattie when he begins courting her. Mattie spends her summer working at the Glenmore hotel, and one day, a guest winds up dead--a guest who left some letters with Mattie, asking her to burn them. As Mattie deals with this young woman's death and the letters she possesses, she also has to face some realizations about her own life.

Well-written and inspiring, this book takes place in 1906, incorporating facts from a murder that actually happened in upstate New York. Although the murder plays a part in the book, the driving reason to read this book is the wonderful protagonist. Mattie so realistic--her hopes and disappointments and struggles so well-portrayed. The organization of the book, which starts on the day of Grace Brown's death and then has flashbacks to early points in Mattie's life, sets up its own kind of mystery; beyond just wondering what will happen with Grace Brown, the reader also gets to piece together what Mattie will do about her dreams and the obstacles in her way. This was a book I didn't want to put down and definitely want to read again.

AE