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Sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey has a word for everything, and big dreams but little hope of seeing them come true. She collects words, stores them up as a way of fending off the hard truths of her life, the truths that she can't write down in stories.The fresh pain of her mother's death. The burden of raising her sisters while her father struggles over his brokeback farm. The mad welter of feelings Mattie has for handsome but dull Royal Loomis, who says he wants to marry her. And the secret dreams that keep her going--visions of finishing high school, going to college in New York City, becoming a writer.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 Big Moose Lake, Mattie discovers that the letters could reveal the grim truth behind a murder.Set in 1906 in the Adirondack Mountains, against the backdrop of the murder that inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, this Printz Honor-winning coming-of-age novel effortlessly weaves romance, history, and a murder mystery into something moving, and real, and wholly original.

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When summer comes to the North Woods, time slows down. And some days it stops altogether. The sky, gray and lowering for much of the year, becomes an ocean of blue, so vast and brilliant you can't help but stop what you're doing-pinning wet sheets to the line maybe, or shucking a bushel of corn on the back steps-to stare up at it. Locusts whir in the birches, coaxing you out of the sun and under the boughs, and the heat stills the air, heavy and sweet with the scent of balsam.As I stand here on the porch of the Glenmore, the finest hotel on all of Big Moose Lake, I tell myself that today-Thursday, July 12, 1906-is such a day. Time has stopped, and the beauty and calm of this perfect afternoon will never end. The guests up from New York, all in their summer whites, will play croquet on the lawn forever. Old Mrs. Ellis will stay on the porch until the end of time, rapping her cane on the railing for more lemonade. The children of doctors and lawyers from Utica, Rome, and Syracuse will always run through the woods, laughing and shrieking, giddy from too much ice cream.I believe these things. With all my heart. For I am good at telling myself lies.Until Ada Bouchard comes out of the doorway and slips her hand into mine. And Mrs. Morrison, the manager's wife, walks right by us, pausing at the top of the steps. At any other time, she'd scorch our ears for standing idle; now she doesn't seem to even know we're here. Her arms cross over her chest. Her eyes, gray and troubled, fasten on the dock. And the steamer tied alongside it."That's the Zilpha, ain't it, Mattie?" Ada whispers. "They've been dragging the lake, ain't they?"I squeeze her hand. "I don't think so. I think they were just looking along the shoreline. Cook says they probably got lost, that couple. Couldn't find their way back in the dark and spent the night under some pines, that's all.""I'm scared, Mattie. Ain't you?"I don't answer her. I'm not scared, not exactly, but I can't explain how I feel. Words fail me sometimes. I have read most every one in the Webster's International Dictionary of the English Language, but I still have trouble making them come when I want them to.Right now I want a word that describes the feeling you get-a cold, sick feeling deep down inside-when you know something is happening that will change you, and you don't want it to, but you can't stop it. And you know, for the first time, for the very first time, that there will now be a before and an after, a was and a will be. And that you will never again be quite the same person you were.I imagine it's the feeling Eve had as she bit into the apple. Or Hamlet when he saw his father's ghost. Or Jesus as a boy, right after someone sat him down and told him his pa wasn't a carpenter after all.What is the word for that feeling? For knowledge and fear and loss all mixed together? Frisdom? Dreadnaciousness? Malbominance?Standing on that porch, under that flawless sky, with bees buzzing lazily in the ro Excerpted from A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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Publishers Weekly Review

Donnelly's (The Tea Rose) riveting first novel for young adults, like Dreiser's An American Tragedy, was inspired by the Chester Gillette case. Narrated by 16-year-old Mattie, who works at the Glenmore Hotel on Big Moose Lake, the book begins on Thursday, July 12, 1906, the day a search party discovers the drowned body of Grace Brown, a hotel guest. Earlier that day, Grace had given to Mattie a bundle of letters to burn, her correspondence with Gillette. As the mystery behind Grace's death unfolds, flashback chapters fill in details of Mattie's life on her family's farm. Each begins with her "word of the day," which firmly establishes Mattie's love of language and which ties in with the unfolding events. Readers soon discover that her teacher considers Mattie to be a gifted writer and, at the woman's urging, Mattie applies to Barnard College and receives a full scholarship. But as the oldest daughter of a widowed father, Mattie feels an obligation to stay on the farm, and her budding romance with handsome Royal Loomis adds further complications. Each character contributes to the narrator's growing awareness of the narrow possibilities available to women at the turn of the 20th century. Her friendships with Weaver (the only other student with college aspirations, as well as the only African-American boy in their town) and her teacher (who has a secret of her own) are especially well realized. The author's ability to recast the murder mystery as a cautionary tale for Mattie makes the heroine's pending decision about her future the greatest source of suspense. Ages 12-up. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

School Library Journal Review

Gr 7 Up-Letters connected with a tragic drowning in 1906 inspired Jennifer Donnelly to write A Northern Light (Harcourt, 2003), a contemporary story about a young woman struggling to fulfill her dreams and commitments. Seventeen-year-old Mattie Gokey yearns to write stories with the new words she learns each day, but a promise to her dying mother has left her caring for her father and three sisters. She's also torn between the handsome neighbor who has asked her to marry him and a feisty black youth, her intellectual soulmate, who urges her to go to New York City where they both have college scholarships. Mattie is forced to confront all her choices as she reads a stack of letters entrusted to her by a female guest at the hotel where she works. Later, the guest is found floating dead in a nearby lake. Hope Davis narrates the novel's intense and humorous moments with equal veracity. She is especially skilled at bringing to life the hotel's Irish cook and Mattie's French Canadian uncle. A Northern Light is a treasure trove of richly resonant descriptions of people, place, and feelings. This recording will be one that listeners return to, and it will be a valuable addition to both school and public library collections.-Barbara Wysocki, Cora J. Belden Library, Rocky Hill, CT(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Gr. 10-12. Donnelly's first YA novel begins with high drama drawn straight from history: Grace Brown's body is discovered, and her murder, which also inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, is the framework for this ambitious, beautifully written coming-of-age story set in upstate New York in 1906. Sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey is a waitress at the Glenmore Hotel when Brown is murdered. As she learns Brown's story, her narrative shifts between the goings-on at the hotel and her previous year at home: her toil at the farm; her relationship with her harsh, remote father; her pain at being forbidden to accept a college scholarship. "Plain and bookish," Mattie is thrilled about, but wary of, a handsome neighbor's attentions, and she wonders if she must give up her dream of writing if she marries. In an intelligent, colloquial voice that speaks with a writer's love of language and an observant eye, Mattie details the physical particulars of people's lives as well as deeper issues of race, class, and gender as she strains against family and societal limitations. Donnelly adds a crowd of intriguing, well-drawn secondary characters whose stories help Mattie define her own desires and sense of self. Many teens will connect with Mattie's deep yearning for independence and for stories, like her own, that are frank, messy, complicated, and inspiring. GillianEngberg.

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Jennifer Donnelly was born in Port Chester, New York in 1963. She majored in English literature and European history at the University of Rochester. Her books for adults include The Tea Rose, The Winter Rose, and The Wild Rose. She is also the author of a picture book for children entitled Humble Pie and several young adult novels including Revolution and These Shallow Graves. A Northern Light was awarded Britain's Carnegie Medal, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction, and a Michael L. Printz Honor.

(Bowker Author Biography)