| A Northern Light | |
|---|---|
Audiobook cover, 2003 |
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| Author(s) | Jennifer Donnelly |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Historical novel |
| Publisher | Harcourt Children's Books |
| Publication date | April 1, 2003 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 400 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 978-0-15-216705-9 |
| OCLC Number | 49796591 |
| LC Classification | PZ7.D7194 No 2003 |
A Northern Light (2003) is an American historical novel by Jennifer Donnelly. In the United Kingdom it was published under the alternative title A Gathering Light. It is based on the Big Moose Lake murder case of 1906, a real event, but unlike Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, also based on the murder, Donnelly's book is concerned more with the life of a young girl who gets caught up in it.
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The novel won the 2003 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature [1] and the 2003 Carnegie Medal.[2] It was named one of the Young Adult Library Services Association's top ten books for young adults in 2004[3], and also was a Michael L. Printz Award honor book that year [4]. In 2007 it was selected by judges of the CILIP Carnegie Medal for children's literature as one of the UK's ten finest children's books of the past seventy years.[5]
A Northern Light's feisty sixteen-year-old narrator Mathilda "Mattie" Gokey has strong morals and is highly intelligent. She lives in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York—the "North Woods" in her words—during 1906. Mattie dreams of going to college at Barnard. While she is smart enough to go, she is not allowed. Her mother died and her brother, Lawton, left home because of a fight he got in with their father [6]. Later in the story the reader discovers that Lawton thinks his father killed their mother by working her too hard, giving her cancer. There is no one to work on the farm except Mattie and her three younger sisters, Abby, Lou, and Beth. Her family struggles with money, so they can't send a girl with two good working hands to college.
Mattie's passion is reading and writing. Every day, she looks up a new word in her dictionary so that she can educate herself and become more articulate [7]. Her best friend, Weaver Smith, is also intelligent and has large aspirations. Weaver is African-American and is as strong in math as Mattie is in literature. Weaver is the one who shows Mattie's writings to their teacher, Mrs. Wilcox, which prompts her to send an application to Barnard for Mattie. This application leads Mattie to get a full scholarship to Barnard [8], but when she does the math, she knows she can't afford to buy the books, a train ticket, or to leave her father with her three young sisters to run the farm.
Mattie soon finds out that Mrs. Wilcox clandestinely writes feminist poetry, unwelcome in the world of literature. She writes about the lack of rights for women [9], which is a sensitive subject at the turn of the century. Her work is not looked highly upon and many people think poorly of her, but she keeps writing, encouraging Mattie to do the same.
Mattie doesn't give up completely on going to college. Before she died, her mother made her promise to pursue knowledge, and Mattie intends to. Mattie cleans her rich and nosy Aunt Josie's house every week. She tries to ask her for money, but Aunt Josie doesn't think girls should be allowed to learn and refuses to give Mattie money.
Mattie, a romantic, is jealous of her friend, Minnie's, loving relationship with her husband Jim. Later on in the novel, Mattie helps Minnie give birth to her twins.
The novel is written in alternating chapters from the past and present. In the past, Mattie is explaining her life on the farm, and in the present she is working at Glenmore, a hotel, to earn money during the summer. At Glenmore, the body of Grace Brown is found in the lake next to Glenmore[10]. Earlier that day, Grace had asked Mattie to burn a pack of letters.[11]. Mattie didn't have to time to burn them. She is drawn in by the mystery of what they might say, and she begins to read them. They reveal some shocking information about Grace's lover, Chester Gillette, who checked into the hotel as Carl Grahm. Grace was pregnant with Chester's child at the time [12], so he killed her.
Royal Loomis is also a major part of this story. He has recently developed a crush on Mattie, but she can't figure out why. She thinks she is plain, bookish, and too smart for her own good. Even though Mattie knows she likes Royal, she continues to push him away because she doesn't think he likes her for the right reasons. Despite the rejection, it draws Royal even closer. Still young and naive, Royal's continuous advances make Mattie nervous, but she can't resist. She compares Royal to the characters in books she reads, and makes herself think that he is as heroic as the literary characters. He tries to connect with her by giving her a book. Unfortunately he chooses to give her a cookbook, which is a backhanded gift that shows he wants her to be just like other girls. Mattie is more confused than ever with Royal's insincere advances. Unfortunately, all of the mixed feelings that she has for Royal end up being pointless because in the end, he only likes her because he wanted to get a part of her land.[13].
Emmie Hubbard, the lonely, poor, and depressed neighbor with seven children, is having an affair with a married man, Mr. Loomis, Royal's father. Royal resents the Hubbards because he thinks that his father treats them better than his own family.
After Weaver's house was set fire by the same people that murdered his father, taking all of his saved money with it, Emmie steps up and invites Weaver's mother to stay with her in her home. Now Emmie has a good, strong-willed woman to clean her up and help her with a business to make money. Weaver's mother has a place to stay where she is needed.
In the end, Mattie makes the incredibly difficult choice to leave the North Woods and go to school in New York City [14]. She leaves in the morning, and the only person she tells is Weaver. She writes three letters, one to her father, one to Royal, and one to Weaver's mother. To her father, she leaves two dollars and a promise that she will keep in touch. To Royal she leaves the ring that he gave to her when he proposed. Finally, to Weaver's mother she leaves just enough money to pay off Emmie's taxes. She also gives Weaver money for a train ticket to college. As her closest friend, Weaver does not want her to leave but he understands that she is going to make a better life for herself. Though she feels incredibly guilty for leaving, she can't help but also feel excited, scared, and willing. She has made her peace with Grace because she decided to show the letters to the world so now everybody can see the true, tragic story of Grace Brown [15]. She is now ready to leave it behind, and keep her life in the North Woods as a memory.
Jennifer Donnelly intertwines this real-life murder of Grace Brown with fictional Mattie Gokey's story. The readers get a taste of how bitter and sweet ordinary life is in the 1900s mixed with a non-fiction murder mystery.[16]
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Ruby Holler |
Carnegie Medal recipient 2003 |
Succeeded by Millions |