Teen Fiction

A Northern Light

Name: A Northern Light
Author: Jennifer Donnelly
ISBN: 9780152053109

by Jennifer Donnelly

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Overview

Mattie Gokey has a word for everything. 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.
Yet when the drowned body of a young woman turns up at the hotel where Mattie works, all her words are useless. But in the dead woman's letters, Mattie again finds her voice, and a determination to live her own life.
Set in 1906 against the backdrop of the murder that inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, this coming-of-age novel effortlessly weaves romance, history, and a murder mystery into something moving, and real, and wholly original.

In 1906, sixteen-year-old Mattie, determined to attend college and be a writer against the wishes of her father and fiance, takes a job at a summer inn where she discovers the truth about the death of a guest. Based on a true story.

Synopsis

An astonishing and heartbreaking debut—the story of a young woman's coming-of-age and the murder that rocked turn-of-the-century America

Publishers Weekly

Donnelly weaves the fictional story of 16-year-old Mattie into the events of the Gilette murder case (also the inspiration of Dreiser's An American Tragedy). "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," said PW's Best Books citation. Ages 14-up. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

About the Author, Jennifer Donnelly

JENNIFER DONNELLY is the author of a novel for adult readers, The Tea Rose, and a picture book, Humble Pie. For A Northern Light, her first teen novel, she drew on stories she heard from her grandmother while growing up in upstate New York. She now lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Editorials

From the Publisher

A 2011 ALA Popular Paperbacks Title

New York Times Book Review

"Jennifer Donnelly has populated her first young-adult novel with a community of distinctive characters who ring rich and true."

New York Times Book Review

Jennifer Donnelly has populated her first young-adult novel with a community of distinctive characters who ring rich and true.

Publishers Weekly

"Riveting"

School Library Journal

"A fine blending of characters, setting, and suspense."

KLIATT

To quote from the review of the audiobook in KLIATT, September 2003: On July 12, 1906, the body of Grace Brown, a young girl pregnant but unmarried, was found in Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks. Her boating companion, Chester Gillette, was later discovered enjoying himself in a mountain hotel and arrested. Convicted of Grace's murder, Gillette was executed on March 30, 1908. This sad tale was used by Theodore Dreiser in An American Tragedy. It also is the impetus for Donnelly's romantic mystery A Northern Light. In this novel for YAs, Donnelly creates a wonderful character, 16-year-old Mattie Gokey, the daughter of a poor farmer in the woods of upper New York. Grace Brown, a sad young woman, is staying at the Glenmore Hotel where Mattie works. Grace gives Mattie a bundle of letters, saying that they must be destroyed—but after Grace dies, Mattie reads them instead, and suspects Grace was murdered. Mattie must also deal with family problems: her mother is dead, her younger sisters need guidance, her father drinks, and her brother has run off after a fight with their father. Mattie, like Grace, falls madly in love. Royal Loomis is a local farm boy, lovely to look at but interested only in seed corn and chickens. He is really more interested in her father's land than in her. Mattie's best friend Weaver, an angry young black man, gets into fights with whites because of his "uppity" attitude. He has been accepted at Columbia, but may get killed before he can get there. Mattie, a talented writer, has also been accepted at a New York college, Barnard, but had promised her dying mother she'd look after the family. Female teens will find in Mattie and other characters strongrole models. (An ALA Best Book for YAs.) KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2003, Harcourt, 396p., Ages 15 to adult.
—Janet Julian

Children's Literature

Taking her cue from Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, Jennifer Donnelly returns to the infamous 1906 Chester Gillette/Grace Brown murder in the Adirondacks. Donnelly's take on the event, though, centers around the life and hopes of Mattie Gokey. Mattie, a soon to be seventeen-year-old, is a local girl living in the hardscrabble farming country that only comes alive with the summer tourist season. The story evolves in flashbacks between Mattie's waitress job at one of the lake resorts and her home life with a tough widowed father forcing her into the role of mother to her younger siblings. Buried within this environment, it's a wonder Mattie has time to even think, no less harbor dreams of college implanted by her radical feminist teacher, Miss Wilcox (she smokes!) Add to this mix a gratuitous, intelligent black kid angry decades before his time and a redneck suitor-not to mention Grace Brown's bestowal of her love letters upon Mattie before her murder-and one ends up with an attempted microcosm of the era. Donnelly pushes this a bit too hard, but one still roots for Mattie. Will she pull it all together as easily as she plays with words and escape in time? 2003, Harcourt, Ages 12 up.
— Kathleen Karr

VOYA

Sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey dreams of going to college and becoming a writer, but a promise to her dying mother to care for the family threatens to keep her chained to their farm forever. Handsome, irresistible Royal, the boy next door, wants to marry Mattie. When she takes a job at a local hotel, she finds out what happens when dreams die-literally-when one afternoon a guest is found dead of an apparent accidental drowning. Before she died, Grace Brown handed a packet of letters to Mattie with instructions to burn them. Curious, Mattie reads them instead and discovers that Grace was pregnant by her wealthy employer. When he accompanied her to the hotel, it was not to be married, but to kill the poor woman who interfered with his plans. Grace's story helps Mattie realize that she must leave for the sake of her own happiness rather than be bound by duty, especially when she also discovers that Royal only wants to marry her to gain farmland. She leaves the letters behind to enable the truth to emerge and boards a train for New York. Switching between Mattie's farm life and her hotel work, this drawn-out tale focuses on dignity and self-worth. Some characters possess these traits; others never will. Mattie's strength, courage, and love of learning mark her as a captivating heroine. Mattie's story is based on real events that occurred in 1906 New York's Adirondack Mountains and became the inspiration for Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. VOYA Codes: 4Q 3P S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Will appeal with pushing; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2003, Harcourt, 396p,
— Pam Carlson

School Library Journal

Gr 8 Up-Set in the Adirondacks in 1906, this atmospheric story based on a true incident involves a teen trapped by family expectations, a fickle fianc , and a murder. A fine blending of characters, setting, and suspense. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

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+) First printing of 50,000