A Northern Light

Donnelly, Jennifer. A Northern Light. Boston, MA: Harcourt, 2003.

Growing up in the woods of mid-1900’s northern New York, Mathilda "Mattie" Gokey is in charge of taking care of the motherly duties after her mother’s death. An aspiring and gifted writer, Mattie longs to attend school every day and go to college, but her father is more concerned with her assistance in running the family farm. Mattie is charged with taking care of her younger siblings and tending to farm duties, however her love of words is never far away. Each day she picks a different word out of the dictionary her mother bought and commits it to memory, cheering on her sisters to do the same. Ms. Wilcox, the teacher at the local school, encourages Mattie to further her schooling so Mattie can achieve her dream of becoming a writer. Mattie is not alone in her desire to go to college; her friend, Weaver Smith, has gotten accepted to Columbia. She finds out that she is accepted into Barnard and struggles with her desire to go off to school and her promise to her dying mother to take care of her family. Her personal distress is complicated by the fact her gruff father does not support her leaving. Nearly resigning to staying in her town, marrying handsome Royal Loomis and being a housewife, Mattie gets the opportunity to work at a local hotel, where she begins to save money. There she meets Grace Brown, a woman who is later found drowned in the lake. Grace has entrusted Mattie with destroying personal letters, which Mattie is unable to do before Grace’s body is found. After uncovering some truths about herself, her family, her town, Grace and her beau, Mattie comes to the realization that she can no longer stay put and must move on and go to college.

A Northern Light creates a story around the true life murder of Grace Brown; a story that attracted a great deal of attention in the time it took place. The story is not in chronological order, going back and forth from present to the recent past, showing how Mattie ended up working at the hotel. Donnelly could have merely made a Grace a secondary character, but by allowing Mattie to play a role in the context of the situation. Giving Mattie the ability to read and glean knowledge from Grace’s actual letters, Mattie is able to draw conclusions about her own life. This historical element allows Mattie to make the internal change she needs to in order to make the decision to go off to school, which is what she desires to do the entire novel. Lisa Prolman in School Library Journal also indicates this in saying that “Grace’s story weaves its way through Mattie’s, staying in the background but providing impetus.” Mattie learns from Grace’s story and that fact is related to the reader, but not in a harsh or pointed way.

Adding to the realism of the unfolding events and Mattie’s connection to them is the fact that the author words and descriptions are steeped in the time period. From depictions about daily house and farm work, to the imagery about the clothes and food, Donnelly creates a world in which Mattie grapples with the same issues that modern teens face. Though the exterior and time is different, Mattie’s own longing to be her own person and the strain of defining herself rings true even today. Booklist’s Gillian Engberg agrees saying that “many teens will connect with Mattie’s deep yearning for independence.” This balance of creating an authentic environment for Mattie to live in and her universal struggle to be herself is delicate and well-thought out.

Through the realization that life is fleeting and that things are not always as they seem, Mattie is allowed to make the critical change needed of any main character. The interweaving of the two stories also allows for the plot to show the main struggle, between what Mattie wants and what other people want from her. Grounding the story in a factual event, the author was able to give Mattie insight by way of a cautionary tale. In the end, as Mattie waits on the train that will take her to her new life, she is filled with a mix of anxiety and excitement. Standing on the train platform Mattie thinks, “I am standing, frightened but resolved…Is there a word for that? Feeling scared of what’s to come but eager for it too? If there is I mean to find it.” In particular, this sentence has a resonance of truth for a reader regardless of time period.


Book Jacket found on: http://thebooksmugglers.com/2009/09/book-review-a-northern-light-by-jennifer-donnelly.html