A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

16-yr-old Mattie Gokey has big dreams but little hope of seeing them come true. Desperate for money, she takes a job at the Glenmore, where hotel guest Grace Brown asks her to burn a bundle of secret letters. But when Grace's drowned body is fished from the lake, Mattie discovers the letters reveal the grim truth behind a murder.

Scott Turow had this to say about A Northern Light: "A book that sweeps across the genre boundaries of murder mystery, romance, and historical fiction--resulting in an original novel that is both gripping and touching."

I recently read this tale of poverty, racism, and feminism at the turn of the twentieth century, and I loved it! The characters were all very believable; each of the characters has both frustrating and redeeming qualities. Even Mattie is realistically flawed. A pet peeve I often have is that authors TELL us that the heroine is brave, smart, resourceful, etc., instead of just showing us, or having their actions speak for themselves. I thought Donnelly did a great job of telling the story and letting us come to our own conclusions.

I don't often take notes when reading, but there were several passages I marked in this one, for one reason or another:

• ...madness isn't like they tell it in books...when your mind goes, it's not castles & cobwebs & silver candelabra. It's dirty sheets & sour milk & dog shit on the floor.
• Switchel is easier to drink than plain water when you are hot and thirsty. Mixing a little vinegar, ginger, and maple syrup into the water helps it to digest.
• I did not wish to become a sneak, but sometimes one had no choice. Especially when one was a girl and craved something sweet but couldn't say why, and had to wait till no one was looking to wash a bucket of bloody rags, and had to say she was "under the weather" when she had cramps that could knock a moose over...she was fed up with sore bosoms and stained drawers and the fact that she couldn't just live life in the open...
• Cripes, it wasn't my fault. What did he go and have 4 girls for?
• Why do writers make things sugary when life isn't that way...Why don't they tell how a pigpen looks after the sow's eaten her children? Or how it is for a girl when her baby won't come out? Or that cancer has a smell to it?
• I didn't think how saying yes to him would mean no to all the other things I wanted.