Product Description
Sixteen-year-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 entrusts her with the task of burning a secret bundle of letters. But when Grace's drowned body is fished from the lake, Mattie discovers that the letters could reveal the grim truth behind a murder. Set in 1906 against the backdrop of the murder that inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, Jennifer Donnelly's astonishing debut novel effortlessly weaves romance, history, and a murder mystery into something moving, and real, and wholly original. Includes a reader's guide and an interview with the author.

Amazon.com Review
It's 1906 and 16-year-old Mattie Gokey is at a crossroads in her life. She's escaped the overwhelming responsibilities of helping to run her father's brokedown farm in exchange for a paid summer job as a serving girl at a fancy hotel in the Adirondacks. She's saving as much of her salary as she can, but she's having trouble deciding how she's going to use the money at the end of the summer. Mattie's gift is for writing and she's been accepted to Barnard College in New York City, but she's held back by her sense of responsibility to her family--and by her budding romance with handsome-but-dull Royal Loomis. Royal awakens feelings in Mattie that she doesn't want to ignore, but she can't deny her passion for words and her desire to write. At the hotel, Mattie gets caught up in the disappearance of a young couple who had gone out together in a rowboat. Mattie spoke with the young woman, Grace Brown, just before the fateful boating trip, when Grace gave her a packet of love letters and asked her to burn them. When Grace is found drowned, Mattie reads the letters and finds that she holds the key to unraveling the girl's death and her beau's mysterious disappearance. Grace Brown's story is a true one (it's the same story told in Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy and in the film adaptation, A Place in the Sun), and author Jennifer Donnelly masterfully interweaves the real-life story with Mattie's, making her seem even more real. Mattie's frank voice reveals much about poverty, racism, and feminism at the turn of the twentieth century. She witnesses illness and death at a range far closer than most teens do today, and she's there when her best friend Minnie gives birth to twins. Mattie describes Minnie's harrowing labor with gut-wrenching clarity, and a visit with Minnie and the twins a few weeks later dispels any romance from the reality of young motherhood (and marriage). Overall, readers will get a taste of how bitter--and how sweet--ordinary life in the early 1900s could be. Despite the wide variety of troubles Mattie describes, the book never feels melodramatic, just heartbreakingly real. (14 and older) --Jennifer Lindsay

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 150 reviews)

Trapped by J. Badger (Bimingham, Al)

4 Stars
October 22, 2009
A Northern Light is the coming of age story of a young woman desparately trying to escape the narrow confines of her present life. The year is 1906. The heroine, Matilde Gokey, is a poor farmer's daughter in upper state New York. Her mother has recently died and she finds herself raising her younger sisters and helping her difficult, diffident father with the exhausting farm chores. She wants more than anything else to go to college and become a writer but sees no way to achieve this goal. All around her she sees other women trapped by the limited lives permitted them. Jennifer Donnelly does an excellent job in portraying the historical plight of woman. She does so without sentimentality and with a dose of humor and no little irony. The main character is very well realized. However, I wish more time had been spent on the mystery that serves as the novel's framework: the murder of Grace Brown. Grace Brown's murder has previously been told in Dreiser's An American Tragedy and the movie, A Place in the Sun. Both of these works are told from the viewpoint of the villain-Chester Gillette. While A Northern Light introduces Grace Brown's viewpoint for the first time that I can recall, her story could have been more fully developed. Even so, I found the novel to be very worthwhile and hard to put down. I don't think I will forget Mathilde easily.

Gifted author, terrific book by Patricia Kay (Houston, TX United States)

5 Stars
September 11, 2009
This book might be billed as a Y.A. novel, but it's a satisfying read for adults, as well. I loved it. Mattie is a remarkable girl, wise beyond her years, yet she's a typical teenager in many ways. I saw my granddaughter in her, and that made me smile even as I shook my head over her sometimes wrongheaded choices. Jennifer Donnelly is a wonderful writer and her skill shines through in this complicated, parallel story line. She made the setting, the time, and the people come alive, and the book is filled with heart, warmth and laugh out loud observations and situations, even as it deals with serious issues. I read this book in two sittings, even though I'd have preferred to read it straight through. Unfortunately, work wouldn't wait. My only regret after reading A NORTHERN LIGHT is that now I have no Jennifer Donnelly book to look forward to until she finishes the third book in her Rose Trilogy. Hurry up, Jennifer, please? VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Printz Honor Book? What was the winner? by Sophie (Covington, Texas)

5 Stars
September 09, 2009
"A Northern Light" was a Printz honor book (an American Library Association award for teen books) during its year of publication. Occasionally ALA does miss the mark, but they didn't this time. If this was an honor book, the winner must have been extremely good. The author does a good job of weaving fiction with an actual murder of a young woman that happened at a resort in New York State at the turn of the last century. The murder victim leaves some letters in the care of Mattie, a hard-working young woman who wants nothing more than to earn money so that she can go to college and better herself, perhaps beyond what was commonplace for young women of that day. The characters aren't stock, but readers should have no difficulty keeping up with which character is which. I honestly wanted to keep reading to find out whether the mystery of the murder at the resort would be solved, whether Mattie would keep her promise to the murder victim, and whether Mattie would marry or go to college.

A beautiful, realistic coming-of-age novel by AUPoohBear (New England, USA)

5 Stars
May 04, 2009
Set in the Adirondocks in 1906, sixteen year old Mattie Gokey helps run the family farm and look after her younger siblings now that her mother has passed away and her older brother ran off. Encouraged by a forward thinking teacher, Mattie devours words and dreams of attending college and becoming a writer herself. She's torn in her loyalities between duty and dreams which are further complicated by a romance with a local boy. Mattie also feels drawn to a young woman who is a guest at the hotel where Mattie works in the summer. When the young woman turns up drowned, Mattie is even more drawn to her and learning this young woman's story. Mattie tells her own story alternating between past and present using her favorite words from the dictionary to highlight the important happenings of the last year. This is an incredibly well-written novel with rich details that sucked me into the story and didn't let go. I had incredibly sympathy for Mattie, being a literature lover and a college educated woman. I, too, was torn in what I wanted her to do. The murder subplot is only a small part of the book but it shapes Mattie's life and helps her decide where her place is. I have seen this book on the shelves since it was first published and I don't know why it took me so long to read it. It's one of the best YA novels I've read. I especially enjoyed all the literary references to my favorite writers.

Lovely by P. Anderson (Camas, WA)

4 Stars
February 06, 2009
This was a lovely book. I enjoyed it and was held in suspense throughout, wondering how the tale of the murder would play out and what the protagonist would do... I would have given it five stars, but there were a few places in the book I thought dragged or I didn't care for the image it gave in my mind. I would definitely recommend it as a whole though! Very artistically written. I especially love how the author weaves in the word of the day... very nice!

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