A Northern Light

Title: A Northern Light
Author: Jennifer Donnelly- Narrator: Mattie Gokey
Publication date: 2003
Number of pages: 396
Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction
Geographical Setting: Adirondack Mountains (New York State), North Woods
Time Period: 1906
Series: N/A

Plot Summary: A talented and budding writer, Mattie Gokey has promised her dying mother that she will always take care of her father and younger siblings on the failing family farm. This entails her missing school often and possibly giving up her dreams of moving to New York City and studying to be a writer. She has the chance to save up money for her enrollment at Barnard College when she gets a summer job at a fancy hotel in the Adirondacks. Here she enjoys freedoms to live the life of a young woman but feels the pull from her family responsibilities and her new romance with the handsome Royal Loomis. Royal is not interested in her books and words but he has awakened feelings in Mattie which she has never experienced. When the body of hotel guest Grace Brown is found in the lake and her male companion missing, Mattie discovers the truth about Grace’s life and death in the letters she left with her.

Subject Headings: young adult, Adirondack Mountains, abortion, murder, first love, farm life, young motherhood, feminism, poverty, racism, family

Appeal: Named a Printz Honor Book by the ALA, author’s first young adult novel, historical details, struggle/suffering, hopeful

Similar Authors and Works (Fiction): Theodore Dreiser- An American Tragedy, novel was inspired by the Chester Gillette murder case.

Similar Authors and Works (Nonfiction): Grace Brown- Grace Brown’s Love Letters, the victim’s letters to her murderer (currently out of print).