Historic Fact and Fiction

When I was a teenager, I loved reading historical fiction. Books that took me to another place in time. I particularly remember the books of Anya Seton and Taylor Caldwell and their depictions of women characters during earlier historical periods. So I readily agreed to participate in author Jane Kirkpatrick's "Duet" blog tour scheduled for this week.

A Flickering Light is a fascinating story of Jessie Anne Gaebele who is determined to become a photographer in a small Minnesota town at the turn of the century. When we first meet Jessie, she is in her mid-teens and both she and her older sister have been sent out to work to help support their close-knit family.

Jessie is a determined young woman and willing to work hard for what she wants. Fascinated by the images she sees in the landscape around her, she finds a job as an assistant to a portrait photographer. Joined by her friend Voe, Jessie spends the next several years learning everything she can about portrait photography. At several points during these years, Jessie's boss, F.J. Bauer, becomes deathly ill from mercury poisoning as a result of handling too many photo chemicals. During these times, Jessie and Voe run the photography studio giving Jessie the opportunity to actively make portraits herself. She also learns valuable skills in supervising the administrative tasks of the business as well.

The primary sub-plot is the growing attraction between Jessie and her very married older boss F.J. While this part of the plot is predictable, Kirkpatrick's writing keeps it as fresh and new as these unwelcome feelings are to Jessie. As Jessie matures throughout the story from ages 15-18, her development as a young woman is both believable and poignant. Although Winona, Minnesota is an established town, the story has a bit of the frontier freshness when our towns were more open than they are now.

This coming-of-age story is well worth reading to learn about what life was like for one family in this time and place of our history and also to admire one girl's determination to break free from established conventions and "acceptable" behavior for young ladies.

Paired with A Flickering Light in this "duet" blog tour is another book by Jane Kirkpatrick that is a historical recounting of a real frontier community in Aurora, Oregon in the mid-1850s. Some of the most fascinating chapters of our country's history revolve around the various religious groups who pulled away from society to establish utopian communities, sharing a life together that was built around particular sets of religious beliefs and hard work.

Aurora, An American Experience in Quilt, Community, and Craft benefits immensely from plentiful primary sources as many of the documents, photos, crafts, tools, and stories of the Aurora community have been preserved over time. Kirkpatrick pulls all of things together to write an engaging biography of the founding and history of the Aurora community.

It is a beautifully printed hard-bound book that is chock full of period photographs, contemporary photographs of still-existing buildings, quilts, and tools. Many letters, journals, and other historical documents have been preserved and Kirkpatrick brings these people and their stories to life.

As with many of these communities, the founder William Keil was charismatic and had a strong vision for what the community could be. Kirkpatrick tells the Aurora story with compassionate insight and with great respect. The Aurora colony was more successful than most, but eventually it began to disintegrate. The fact that their story has been preserved for more than 150 years is a testament to their success and their influence on the community in which they lived.

Anyone interested in history and particularly utopian communities would find Aurora an interesting read.

Review: What the Moon Saw

Earlier this summer I found myself in Denver for a meeting. It is impossible for a book person to visit Denver without making a pilgrimage to one of the greatest independent bookstores in the country, The Tattered Cover. What made the trip even better was that I was in the company of three other book lovers. Once we walked into the store together, we dispersed to the four corners of the store and met up again two hours later.

The reason I share this is that before I ever opened the cover of What the Moon Saw by Laura Resau which I purchased there, I already had warm and positive feelings about this book written for young teens. And I was not disappointed.

Clara Luna's name means "clear moon" in Spanish, but other than learning to speak Spanish from her father, there is not much connection between her life in suburban Walnut Hill and the life her father left behind in the rural hills of Mexico. One day a letter arrives out of the blue from Clara's Mexican grandparents inviting her to spend two months of the summer with them. Even though she has never met them or heard from them before, it is decided that she will go. Struggling with curiosity, fear of the unknown, reluctance to leave her life in Walnut Hill and her friends for the summer, Clara also feels a compulsion to go. Dreams and feelings she cannot even articulate are pulling her there.

The story of what Clara finds in Mexico is one of the most beautifully written stories I've read in a long time. The language is rich, luscious, and evocative. Prose written by a poet. Among other things, it presents a picture of rural Mexico caught between the traditional lives of the people and their connection to the land and each other with the reality of uprooted lives as men have left the region and their families behind to make a life for themselves in the United States. What they leave behind and the sacrifices their families make is a poignant commentary on the "other" side of the immigration debate.

What Clara learns and the connections she makes with her grandparents and the people of the mountain village of Yucuyoo is not to be missed. I cannot recommend this story highly enough. It is wonderful.

Review: Angel

Easter Monday seems an appropriate day to review a YA novel about angels. In ANGEL, 14-year old Freya has spent years in treatment for mental illness stemming from a "visitation" when she was a young child in which an angel appeared in her bedroom and told her that she was special and foretold an important role for her in the future when she was older. After the visit, Freya spends years in and out of mental institutions struggling to cope with her belief in angels.

Just when she gets her life back on track and is navigating the social morass of high school popularity, a peculiar girl named Stephanie begins school and does everything she can to convince her classmates that angels are real. With Stephanie's appearance, Freya finds her carefully constructed world starting to crumble as she longs to believe but is held back both by her hard-fought struggles to be "normal" and by her desire to fit in.

With the exception of the angel theme, the plot of the book is a fairly conventional tale of a teen girl coming of age and dealing with the social and family changes that come with the territory. There are two sub-plots involving her brother and father that also feature in the culminating drama of the story.

What is so interesting about this book and is certainly a credit to the author, Cliff McNish, is that by the end of the book, the reader is left quesitoning whether angels are indeed real. The plot drives the book so it is a fast read. But there is enough character development that the reader cares about Freya and Stephanie and what happens to them and cheers for the predictable comeuppance of the snotty, manipulative and cruel "popular" girl.

Perhaps the greatest success of this story, however, is that for all it deals with the realm of fanstasy, it posits some important questions about how we treat each other here on earth. It's not a religious book, but it is a spiritual book -and one that makes some terrific suggestions about actions and consequences.

Review: Looking for Alaska

John Green's first novel, Looking for Alaska, is a faced-paced coming-of-age novel in which many teens will see themselves and their concerns. Although the basic plot line is one we've seen before - "odd" group of kids find themselves thrown together where they wrestle with big issues such as the meaning of life and how to be true to oneself - Green gives it freshness and depth.

This book was written for a young adult audience, but it resonates for adults as well. Many of us can also relate to the experiences of Miles (Pudge) Halter and his new boarding school mates because the situations they encounter mirror much of what we deal with as adults: friendship and loss; distrust of others not exactly like us; emotional pain; possibility; finding kindness; and adventure. They also recall the pain and uncertainties of our own adolescent journeys.

Miles is a smart and witty narrator. The story and the action centers around Alaska Young who is beautiful, bright, sexy, angst-ridden and tragic. She is the comet that Miles and his roommate, "the Colonel" chase after. She befriends them, she taunts them, she mystifies them, and she loves them. There are two others that round out this little circle but they are less defined and exist only as foils for our main trio. Green takes characters that could be stereotypes and realistically fleshes them out so that we are caught up in their story and care about them.

While there are plenty of warnings for inappropriate behavior and consequences, they are presented through an intimate story of one, individual boy's deepening maturity. A boy the reader grows to care about even if he likes to memorize the dying words of famous people.

Although this book would be perfect for school discussion and I am confident that there are teachers who see this book in the same way they view Catcher in the Rye, it will certainly make appearances on the banned books list for language, sex, and underage drinking. It is precisely because of these things and the universality of the experience for today's young people that it should be read and discussed. It accurately represents the choices and activities of today's teens and would resonate with them for precisely these reasons. I highly recommend it. ISBN978-0-14-240251-1, SPEAK; Penguin Putnam imprint.