A Northern Light
Jennifer Donnelly

Mattie Gokey feels trapped by promises she's made to the dead. She dreams of becoming a writer and has been accepted to college, but has promised her dying mother that she wouldn't leave her family and that she'd care for her sisters. She had promised Grace Brown that she would burn her love letters, but when Grace drowns that night, Mattie reads them and realizes that she'd been murdered. Alternating between her summer working at a fancy resort and the previous year at home, Mattie's fifteenth year includes final exams, college acceptance, epiphanies about her beloved teacher and an unlikely courtship by handsome but uneducated Royal Loomis, culminating in the drowning murder of Grace Brown (a true story weaved seamlessly into this fictional one). In this very real, very moving novel, series of events teach Mattie more than she ever meant to learn to about marriage, racism, poverty, feminism, words and finding her own voice. Realizing that Grace's voice had been silenced, Mattie finds the strength to be true to herself. Vivid, multidimensional and intriguing characters combined with Donnelly's flair for words make this Prinz Honor novel unforgettable. Highly Recommended.