A Northern Light

Author:  Jennifer Donnelly
Year: 2003
Publisher:  Harcourt, Inc.

Sixteen year old Mattie Gokey dreams of moving to New York City, attending college and becoming a writer but she's trapped. Her mother died, her old brother ran away and Mattie is forced to help her father take care of the farm and raise her younger sisters. Yet she refuses to give up her dream. She takes a job working at a nearby resort to earn money to pay for travel expenses to New York City and along the way begins to give up on her dreams and settles on the idea of marriage and family. Then, a woman's body is pulled from the lake the resort and, through the dead woman's letters, Mattie realizes that she was murdered.

I LOVED this book. Jennifer Donnelly has a beautiful way with words and the story was very compelling. I loved Mattie and how she never really gave up on her dreams. Maybe it is my own dreams of someday writing that made me love Mattie so much. I also loved the way that Donnelly used words and their definitions to tell the story. That just played to the English major in me. It's a beautifully told story and Donnelly is a master of language.