Author--Jennifer Donnelly

         

Kate Chopin

            Mesh together

Theodore Dreiser’s   An American Tragedy,

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, and any well-written YA title, and you get A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly.  Ok, ok, I know that tells most people nothing since besides American literature majors, very few people read Theodore Dreiser or Kate Chopin, certainly not young adults looking for their next good novel. 

How’s this instead—Mesh together the sensational upstate New York murder trial of Chester Gillette with the stark realities of life for American women before passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, and you will get A Northern Light….Better? 

I found Jennifer Donnelly when the Rhode Island Teen Book Award committee placed Revolution on its nomination list for 2012.  I loved it.  Donnelly gives young adults a view of the complexities of the French Revolution  juxtaposed over the heart-wrenching story of Andi Alpers who is tormented by grief over her brother’s tragic death and her parent’s subsequent divorce.  Part historical fiction, part romance, and part realistic fiction with just a dash of fantasy thrown into the mix, this novel grabbed me from cover to cover.  A complex novel with many time shifts and alternating plots, it is a novel for advanced young adult readers, and, you can probably tell from my raving, crosses over to the adult audience. 

Chester Gillette

A Northern Light will appeal to a similar audience.  Set in upstate New York in 1906, young Mattie Gokey must learn to cope with the loss of her mother to cancer and a very distant father.  The oldest girl, she is responsible for both her younger siblings and running a farm.  However, Mattie is not just any girl, she is a gifted writer whose schoolteacher encourages her to dream about college in New York City.  The discovery of a drowned girl’s body in the lake makes Mattie question how she wants to live her life and whether she can live up to the promises that she has made.  Donnelly does an excellent and believable job of integrating the true story of Grace Brown’s death into Mattie Gokey’s quest to find her way into the world of words that she longs for.  

I can't wait to read Donnelly's other novels!