Book Review: The Betrayal of Maggie Blair, by Elizabeth Laird (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011)

Recommended for ages 12 and up.  


Release date:  April 18, 2011


Witchcraft, whether with a historic or contemporary setting, is a popular subject for young adult novels these days.  British author Elizabeth Laird mines 17th century Scottish history for her engrossing historical fiction novel for teens, The Betrayal of Maggie Blair, published in England last year as The Witching Hour.

Sixteen-year-old Maggie lives with her grandmother in a small Scottish village on the Isle of Bute, both her mother and father having died when she was a small child.  Her grandmother, a scowling, bitter old woman who acts as the village's midwife, believes that she must make the townspeople fear her to survive.  In any era in which everyone believed in the devil without question, it didn't take much to be suspected of being a witch.  When a baby in the village dies mysteriously, the townspeople turn on both her grandmother and herself, charging them with witchcraft, and Maggie must take her chances and flee from the only home and family she has ever known.

She makes her way to a kind uncle and his family, where a different kind of trouble lurks--trouble of a political and religious nature.  Her uncle is a Covenanter--fiercely independent Presbyterians who refused to acknowledge the English king as head of the Presbyterian church in Scotland.  It's a dangerous position, and the king's soldiers are arresting Covenanters and throwing them in prison.  Nonetheless, Maggie thinks she's safe; until Annie, a girl from her village shows up and worms her way into her relatives' affections, with only Maggie realizing that Annie's up to no good.
But even Maggie can't imagine how Annie will betray them all...

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, which has a more serious thread to it than many of the YA historicals--despite the witchcraft element, there is little of the paranormal or romance in this book.  The religious controversies of the era may not appeal to young readers looking for a light read, but this may appeal to fans of Christian fiction, since the struggle for religious freedom and the lengths people will go to worship as they please are a major theme of this book.  Does a person's true duty lie in serving God or protecting his family?  The author does an excellent job evoking the Scotland of the 17th century, although perhaps using a more contemporary vocabulary  (always a balancing act in historical fiction) with a lot of "lassies" thrown in for local color.  Maggie is a courageous heroine who young girls will be able to root for while following her many adventures and decisions until she chooses her path.

This book was loosely based on the stories of some of the author's own ancestors, a few of whom appear as characters in this novel.  The book shortlisted for the Scottish Book Trust's Royal Mail Award for Scottish Children's Books, in the older readers category.

Other blog reviews:
Musing of a Book Addict
Bitsy Bling
Lisa is Busy Nerding
Never Gonna Grow Up

Disclosure:  Review copy provided by publisher

Guest Post from author Carole Estby Dagg

Note:  I am delighted to welcome debut novelist Carole Estby Dagg to The Fourth Musketeer!  She has written a fascinating post about her research into her own family's history, which inspired her new novel The Year We Were Famous, reviewed yesterday here at The Fourth Musketeer. Carole's novel won the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators' Sue Alexander award for most promising new manuscript. 

I grew up with whispers about Great-grandmother Helga and her daughter, my Great-aunt Clara.  What they’d done wasn’t widely talked about because it had been considered a scandal back in 1896: they’d left the rest of the family, including Clara’s seven younger brothers and sisters, back  home in Mica Creek, Washington to walk clear across the country to New York City on a $10,000 wager  that would save the family’s farm.   What’s more they’d covered half the country, from Salt Lake City on, wearing skirts that were a shocking six inches above the ground.   Even worse yet, Helga Estby was one of those suffragists who wanted to prove that women were the equal of any man and deserved the vote.

 

I didn’t discover details about the walk until I was grown, when two articles from Minneapolis newspapers which had been salvaged from a burn barrel started circulating among family members.  When I found out that Clara and her mother  had walked for 232 days, from 25-50 miles a day, surviving flash flood, blizzards, assailants, days without food or water and meeting the whole range of 1890’s society from bands of Indians to president-elect McKinley, I knew this was a story that had to be told.  When I heard that the journals which Clara and Helga had intended to turn  into a book had been destroyed, I vowed that someday I would tell  their story for them. 

 

By writing to librarians across the country and scrolling through microfilmed newspaper collections at the University of Washington, I collected a dozen newspaper articles about the walk.  The articles weren’t as helpful as I’d hoped, though.  They often contradicted each other in details, and descriptions of their adventures were tantalizingly brief.  Being lost for three days in the Snake River Lava fields for three days, showing a band of Ute Indians how to use a curling iron, or shooting an assailant just rated one sentence in a news account.

 

rattlesnake commonly found in the West

If  I wanted to tell  readers what it would have been like to walk those 232 days, I’d have to expand those one-liners into fully developed scenes, and the non-fiction book I had intended to write would have to become historical fiction. I expanded research from the walk itself to circumstances related to the walk: William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan, who were running for president that year; rattlesnakes and early days of railroading; eating habits of cougars; and frontier treatments for blisters.

 

Now that I was writing fiction,  I needed  to write in the voice of a late Victorian young woman.  To do that, I gave up reading all contemporary books for a year and read only books Clara might have read--from classics for school to the dime novels that were passed from hand to hand among young people of the day.  Incidentally, the vampire craze is not new.  Bram Stoker’s Dracula wouldn’t be out for another year, in 1897, but Thomas Preskett Prest’s  Varney, the Vampire,or Feast of Blood, had been out since before the Civil War.

 

Besides reading books, I pored over old maps to reconstruct a plausible day-by-day route for them.  I went on eBay to bid on period postcards of places they passed through, which inspired details for several chapters. I drove part of the route with my daughter, and stopped at a little museum in Rawlins, Wyoming where I bought a pamphlet about a Victorian-era local woman doctor who became  Clara’s ‘someone to talk to.'  Approaching the Internet like a treasure hunt, I hopped  from clue to clue to research relevant trivia like the history of Underwood typewriters, the elevation of the pass in the Blue Mountains, and the name of the Indian Agent at the Umatilla reservation.  How far did research take me?  Right down to finding Folkwear patterns and sewing a Gibson Girl blouse and the Victorian version of under drawers.

 

There’s a danger in being a research person.  I can spend half a day researching the mechanics of the style of snow plow that might have been used in the Blue Mountains in 1896—and then have to cut the scene six months later to balance the high points in the narrative.  Ninety-nine per-cent of my research never makes it to the book in a way that is obvious to the reader, but it helps draw me into that other world.  Besides, it’s fun!

 

Clara, on right, with her mother Helga in black silk dresses

Clara and her mother had their picture taken in Spokane before they left home and had it made into cartes de visite which they gave out as souvenirs to people who took them in for the night.  They also sold copies when they modeled New American Woman clothing and gave lectures on their walk along the way.

 

sketch made from photograph

The reporter in the New York World wrote that Helga Estby and her daughter “intend to write up their adventures afterwards if they survive the experiment.”

 

Cayuse Indian twins

Major Moorehouse, the Indian agent for the Umatilla reservation back in 1896, took hundreds of photographs, many of which were made into postcards.  I was the successful bidder on eBay for this popular postcard and couldn’t resist writing it into the book.

 

Sketch of Helga and Clara brandishing pistols

This article appeared in the New York World when Clara and Helga reached New York.  They must have been appalled to have themselves depicted as armed desperados instead of women desperate to save their farm.

This photo from 1979 shows three generations of Estbys:  I’m standing in the back; Great-aunt Ida Estby, Clara’s sister, is seated on the right; Agnes Krause Estby Funk,  Clara’s sister-in-law, is seated on the left;  my children Rolf and Emily are seated in the front.   The missing links are Clara’s brother Arthur (my grandfather), who died in 1924, and my father, who died in 1972.  

Read more about Carole at the Class of 2K11's website and at her own website, Caroleestbydagg.com.
She will be at BookExpo America in New York at the end of May, so if you're attending, be sure to look out for her! 

Book Review: The Year We Were Famous, by Carole Estby Dagg (Clarion Books, 2011)

Release date:  April 4, 2011


Recommended for ages 12 and up.


Debut novelist Carole Estby Dagg was inspired by her own family history to write the delightful new young adult historical novel, The Year We Were Famous.  Based on the true story of the author's great-aunt and great-grandmother, this adventure-filled novel set at the time of the suffragist movement tells the tale of 17-year old Clara Estby and her mother, Helga, who decide to walk clear across the United States from the small Norwegian-American farming community of Mica Creek, Washington to New York City--some 4,000 miles--to save their family farm from foreclosure.  Helga, a dedicated suffragist, also wanted to prove that women deserved the vote, because a woman was resourceful enough to make it across the country on her own, without a man's help.  All this, in an era when most women never went more than a few miles from their home.

The story, told in the first person by Clara, opens with Clara, the eldest of eight children, having returned from high school in Spokane to her family's farm in Mica Creek.  While brainstorming about ways to raise money to save their farm, her mother comes up with her idea of walking across the country, and begins seeking sponsors. At her pa's suggestion, Clara agrees to go along on an adventure that she can't begin to imagine: "This would be my year abroad, my year to turn the old Clara into someone bold, someone with newfound talents, strengths, and purpose in life."  And when a New York publisher offers them $10,000 if they complete the trip by November 30, 1896, they are on their way, equipped with calling cards, a letter from the mayor of Spokane attesting to their moral character, work boots, canteens, oil-skin ponchos, tooth powder and toothbrushes, two journals and six pencils, a second-hand satchel, and a compass given to Clara by Erick, the boy who's sweet on her--but no change of clothes!

Needless to say, Clara and her mother have no shortage of adventures on the way, as they follow the train tracks East, including encounters with Native Americans, outlaws, handsome journalists, and even the President-Elect and First Lady of the United States, not to mention blizzards, flash flood, lava fields, heat, thirst, and a sprained ankle.  Will they make it to New York on time to collect their prize and save the farm?  You'll have to read this to find out.  I, for one, had a hard time putting this book down. 

Author Dagg does an outstanding job bringing the voices of her intrepid ancestors to life; she extensively researched the lives of Victorian women in order to "get inside Great-Aunt Clara's head."  Teens are likely to identify with Clara's personality clashes with her mother, as well as her dreams of a life more exciting than being a farmer's wife in rural Mica Creek and her struggle between family obligations and becoming independent.

An excellent website for the book  offers more information on historical context and discussion themes; this would be a particularly appropriate title for a mother-daughter book club, and although the protagonist is seventeen, the book would be perfectly appropriate for readers as young as ten. 

And for those interested in reading more about this adventure, you can check out
Linda Lawrence Hunt's 2005 release for adult readers, Bold Spirit:  Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America.  

In addition, a novel aimed at adult readers about Helga and Clara has also been released this spring:  The Daughter's Walk, by Jane Kirkpatrick (WaterBrook Press, 2011).






Here is the book trailer for The Year We Were Famous:



Other blog reviews:
The Ninja Librarian
Unshelved

Disclosure:  Review copy provided by publisher.

Check in tomorrow for a special guest post from author Carole Estby Dagg!

Book Review and Giveaway: Timeless, by Alexandra Monir (Delacorte, 2011)

Recommended for ages 12 and up.

Teens still seem to be devouring paranormal romances, and here's one without any vampires or werewolves but chock full of romantic star-crossed lovers that seems sure to be a hit with teen girls who enjoy books of this genre.  Alexandra Monir, a 25-year old debut novelist who is a professional singer-songwriter, has made use of her songwriting talents as well by weaving original music into the story, which can be purchased as an album (also called Timeless).

Michele Windsor is a happy, popular teenager living with her mother in Los Angeles--except that, since she was a little girl, she has recurring dreams about a mysterious handsome stranger "with eyes the color of sapphires...dressed like none of the other boys she knew." When a tragic accident forces her to move to New York to live with her wealthy, upper-crust society grandparents whom she has never met, she is dazzled at first by their enormous historic mansion, which she has a strange feeling she has seen before.  While the servants are kind, her grandparents are formal and reserved.

She is trying to cope with her mother's death and her new life when she finds a mysterious antique key left by her father to her mother, a key that allows her to travel back in time--to 1910 New York.  Somehow we are not too surprised to find that, while in 1910, she meets at a masquerade ball the handsome stranger of her dreams--Philip, the love of her life.  But as Michele goes back and forth from the present to the past, trying to juggle both her lives, she realizes that although she and Philip belong together, they can never actually be together, since neither can fully exist in the other's time.  Their love seems doomed--can she alter the past and save him before it's too late?

The star-crossed lovers theme of this novel is perennially popular, and the aching romanticism of the story should appeal greatly to teen readers and keep them turning the pages.  Teens will also appreciate the integral role that music as well as romance plays in this novel; our hero, Philip, is a gifted musician, but being a musician as a profession does not fit into his upper-crust family's career plans for him.  Michele, our heroine, writes music as well, and the two are soon collaborating on songs across the century, as she writes lyrics to his music. And you can purchase these songs on-line so the reader doesn't just have to imagine them in her head.

Alexandra Monir spent a year in New York researching and writing this novel, and does a credible job recreating the high society world of the Gilded Age.  Brief portions of the novel also take place in the Roaring Twenties and during World War II.  In an afterword, she cites some of the books used in her research, as well as sights of New York to visit for readers interested in these periods.  She also recommends visiting Newport, where many mansions from this period survive and are open to tours.

Timeless was named an Amazon Best Book of the Month for January 2011, and Monir is already at work on a sequel.

Alexandra's Timeless album cover art

You can find an interview with Alexandra about her book at Ramblings of a Teenage Bookworm.

Giveaway:  To win a copy of this book for yourself or your library, please leave a comment with your e-mail and let me know what time period you'd like to travel to if you could travel back in time!  Winner will be selected at random on April 13, 2011.


Disclosure:  Review copy provided by publisher.

Book Review: Death Cloud: Young Sherlock Holmes: The Legend Begins, by Andrew Lane (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2011)

Recommended for 10 and up.

Sherlock Holmes is one of the most beloved fictional characters ever created, and the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories remain popular, as do many spin-offs in both books and film for adults and young people. A new series by British writer Andrew Lane imagines Sherlock as a fourteen-year old boy solving his first murder mysteries. The first volume in this series, Death Cloud, starts off a bit slowly but soon turns into an intriguing murder mystery.

Andrew Lane writes that his intention with this series is "to find out what Sherlock was like before Arthur Conan Doyle first introduced him to the world. What sort of teenager was he? Where did he go to school, and who were his friends? Where and when did he learn the skills that he displayed later in life – the logical mind, the boxing and sword-fighting, the love of music and of playing the violin? What did he study at university? When (if ever) did he travel abroad? What scared him and who, if anyone, did he love?" Arthur Conan Doyle, notes Lane, gave away little about Sherlock's youth in his published short stories and novels, except a few hints here and there, therefore giving Lane considerable creative license to create the early years for this beloved character.

Set in 1868, when our hero is fourteen, our novel opens with Sherlock at boarding school.  But instead of going home for his summer vacation, he finds out from his brother Mycroft that their father has been posted to India, their mother is "unwell," and Sherlock will have to spend the summer with his peculiar aunt and uncle--who he's never even met--in Hampshire. The only bright note seems to be that the food is better than at school.

But things won't be boring for long, as Sherlock makes friends with a local boy, Matty, who's been witness to a strange mysterious smoke and a dead body covered in boils. Has the plague come back? Matty serves as a younger version of Watson in this story, assisting Sherlock with his investigations. Sherlock is also helped by his American tutor and his feisty and independent daughter Virginia, Sherlock is soon involved with fire, kidnapping, espionage, and murder. Will his powers of deduction help him solve his first murder, while uncovering an evil plot to bring down the British Empire? (this seems more James Bond to me than Sherlock Holmes, but perhaps that's just a contemporary perspective!)

I should disclose that I have not read any of the original Sherlock Holmes stories, but that may be the case as well with the intended audience for this series, teens and tweens.  This new series is not the first about Holmes to be aimed at teen readers, but is the first such series endorsed by the Arthur Conan Doyle estate. (A different series for teens,the award-winning The Boy Sherlock Holmes, by Shane Peacock, was first published in 2007 by Canadian publisher Tundra Press and has four volumes to date.  I have not read any of the titles in that series but it would be interesting to compare and contrast how both authors imagine Sherlock as a youth).  And then of course we have the acclaimed Enola Holmes mystery series by Nancy Springer, concentrating on Sherlocks' much-younger sister, Enola, a talented detective in her own right. 

Lane's series offers plenty of action, as well as laying the ground work for Holmes' later powers of deductive reasoning (we can see the beginnings of his talents in this book).  It's a good entree into the Victorian stories for younger readers, and may get them interested in exploring the originals. 

An interview with Andrew Lane about this series appears at The Book Zone for Boys.

The British website for the series can be found at youngsherlock.com, and includes information on the next volume in this series, Red Leech, as well as a book trailer.

Death Cloud was recently picked as a Spring 2011 Kids' Indie Next choice from Indiebound.org.

Disclosure:  Review copy provided by publisher.

Book Review: mister death's blue-eyed girls, by Mary Downing Hahn (Clarion Books, 2012)

Release date:  April 17, 2012


Recommended:  Ages 12 and up


It's June, 1956, and school's just about out for the summer.  Teenage Nora and her friends have a party with a few boys, dance, hang out and drink too many beers.  But none of them can imagine that their lives are about to change forever.

The next day, the bodies of two of the girls, Cheryl and Bobbi Jo, are found shot to death in the woods near their house.  Everyone thinks that Buddy, Cheryl's ex-boyfriend, who's looks like an imitation of James Dean, must be guilty.  But when no evidence is uncovered, he's released, although everyone in the town still assumes he did it.  Nora is the only one who seems to think someone else is guilty--and the murderer is still out there.  Who's to blame for this brutal crime...and will he wind up going unpunished?

This excellent mystery, written from varying points of view, including Nora, her friend Ellie, Buddy, and the actual guilty murderer, takes place in a time that seems so innocent now--a time of listening to Elvis records, worrying what would happen if a boy touched your knee, having ice cream sodas at the neighborhood drugstore.  But we see how one event makes everything change for all the teens in the story.  What would it be like to have your friends murdered, begin to question your Catholic faith, and not know how to go on living?  And what if everyone in town thought you were a murderer?  This is different from other Mary Downing Hahn books I've read--not a ghost story, but a story nonetheless of how the dead can haunt us in other ways.  Highly recommended.  Note:  the novel is inspired by a real crime which took place when the author was a teen, and has haunted her for years.

Book Review: Second Fiddle by Rosanne Parry (Random House, 2011)

Recommended for ages 8-12.


In her second novel for young people, Rosanne Parry takes us back to Berlin in 1990, at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism in Eastern Europe.  The novel has a terrific opening line:

"If we had known it would eventually involve the KGB, the French National Police, and the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, we would have left that body in the river and called the Polizei like an normal German citizen..."

Our narrator, Jody, is a army kid, used to moving constantly and not forming bonds that are too tight.  But she's made two really good friends in Berlin at the American school--Giselle and Vivian--and the three take music lessons together.  As the novel opens, Jody will soon be moving back to the States since her father is retiring from the army.  In the meantime, she and her friends are preparing for a chamber music ensemble contest in Paris when their teacher falls ill and tells them he can't be their chaperone on the trip from Berlin to France.  On their way home from the lesson, the girls witness a terrible crime in East Berlin, and save a Soviet soldier from drowning in the river.  When they get the idea to have him impersonate their music teacher--providing them with a chaperone and getting the young Estonian away from the Russian army in one fell swoop--they can't foresee what the consequences will be, nor who exactly the young Estonian might be.  Is he friend or foe?  Are the Russians following them on the train to Paris, looking for the Russian sergeant?

The three girls have the adventure of a lifetime in Paris, with lots of local color thrown in, including a stay at Shakespeare and Co., the famous English-language bookstore in Paris.  This is an engaging story of friendship, music, and freedom set in what's a long-ago era for today's tweens--the end of the Cold War.  A time before kids were constantly checking in via texting and phone with their parents--positively the Middle Ages for today's kids!

Second Fiddle was recently picked as a Spring 2011 Kids Indie Next list, from the independent booksellers association.  

Disclosure: Review copy provided by publisher.