TWU - LS 5623 - History, Biography & Nonfiction- A NORTHERN LIGHT

YA

Donnelly, Jennifer. 2004. A NORTHERN LIGHT. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc. ISBN 9780152053109

PLOT SUMMARY - ANALYSIS

This historical fiction begins with a mysterious murder of a guest at the Glenmore hotel in the Adirondacks where Mattie is handed a stash of letters. Mattie Gokey is a sixteen year old girl who has taken the place of her deceased alcoholic mother on an early 1900s farm.  She is responsible for feeding herself and her siblings and her unhappy, harsh father. Mattie dreams of going to college with her best friend, Weaver, and has an inspirational teacher, Miss Wilcox who has secrets of her own.

Mattie works for her aunt cleaning her house and is witness to her very self-righteous behavior.  She fails at getting any financial help from her aunt or her long lost Uncle Fifty and so she starts considering her other life options.

 “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” Horn Book (May/June, 2003).

Mattie fights her fate of marrying a local boy, Royal, and following the cycle of being a farmer’s wife. Mattie sees the “box” that her friend, Minnie lives in with her two newborns and her husband and Mattie yearns to have a different life. She contemplates if people can have both family and learning in their life. “Miss Wilcox had books but no family. Minnie had family now, but those babies would keep her from reading for a good long time…Nobody I knew had both” (page 97).

In Mattie’s life one her most prized possessions is her dictionary.  Each day she chooses a new word to integrate into her daily life and the words serve as chapter titles.  The book chapters alternate between the present day and the past, Mattie’s life on the farm and her life working at the Glenmore hotel. During Mattie’s investigation into the murder of the hotel guest, she finds that the girl had made a dreadful mistake that cost her life. Mattie was determined to make her life her own and so follows her dream of making a change in her life and choosing to better herself through education.

REVIEW EXCERPT(S)

Booklist starred 05/15/03

Publishers Weekly starred 03/03/03

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books 07/01/03

School Library Journal starred 05/01/03

Horn Book 10/01/03

Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) 04/01/03

Library Media Connection starred 10/01/03

Wilson’s Senior High School 10/30/03

CONNECTIONS

Clark, Clara Gillow. 1993. ANNIE’S CHOICE. Homesdale, PA: Boyds Mills Press.

ISBN9781563970535

·         Partner this book as another young woman in the early 1900s faced with choosing between family and education

Hesse, Karen. 2001. WITNESS. New York: Scholastic Press. ISBN 9780439271998

·         Partner this book in discussing further racial prejudices in the North East United States in the 1920s

Gray, Dianne E. 2002. TOGETHER APART. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 9780618187218

·         Partner this book as a look at a young feminist in the late 1800s.