My Name Is Not Easy By: Debby Dahl Edwardson

Luke knows Inupiaq names are full of sounds white people can't say. He knows he will have to leave his behind, when he and his brothers are sent to boarding school hundreds of miles from their Arctic Village. Luke, and his brothers know they will be sent to a Roman Catholic boarding School called Sacred Heart School , where they are treated as students, not family. The students are of diverse nationalities such as Eskimo, Athabascan, Yupik and white. The students line up in different areas of the school cafeteria staying with kids like themselves. Every nationality must speak English. The native tongues must not be heard. If Father Mullen hears students talking in their native tongues he will slap their knuckles hard with a ruler to discipline them. Luke struggles at Sacred Heart School. The story is told by alternate narrators including Amiq, a cocky leader of the Eskimo students, Chickie, mixed race, Donna, Sonny and a few others. The
teens at the boarding School had many adjustments being this was their first time away from their families for many of them. The novel I recommend it's interesting.
LRD/12/27/11

My say:

This is one of the most enjoyable historical fiction novels I've read. It takes place in an Alaskan Catholic mission boarding school in the 1960's. The students have travelled hundreds of miles from home. There are no local schools for native Alaskans who are living far from urban centers in sparsely populated areas. There is an attitude on the part of the Father's and Sister's that the kids need to be tamed. I was in catholic school learning about Indians as they were still called then, about how their ways were savage and had to be replaced by our ways. That attitude is present in this novel as well. There is a disrespect for the native languages, customs, and foods. The languages are not easy for these people and they do not want it used in front of them.
Most of the kids have already had lives unique from and harder than the missionaries who are keeping them and teaching them. I really grew to like these feisty, durable kids. They are often wise to their keepers' prejudices and misconceptions and have a good time with them. The scene in which two boys from a "tribe" known to be hunters are asked to butcher a roadkill moose is hilarious. They had watched their uncle do caribou. They had never done it themselves. They had never even seen a moose. Though the teachers can be stern they are also obviously good people. The events such as sending one young boy away to be adopted without parental consent, the testing of the kids with radioactive iodine by the army, project chariot which was meant to show peace time use of atomic bombs are real. They are things that started native activism to save their hunting, fishing grounds, get local schools and much more. jdw 12/29/11

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

This author also wrote the loosely historical fiction teen comming of age novel A Northern Light which I very much enjoyed both for its history and for its strong female protaganist. Revolution is a much more ambitious historical piece with another strong female lead. Andi has had a triple tragedy the past year. First her beloved little brother died in a way that perhaps she could have prevented then her parent's already rocky marriage finally and irreparably falls apart and her mother along with it. Andi is on antidepressants as a result. They tend to have a side effect of causing hallucinations. Andi is trying to care for herself and her mother, grieve her brother's death and turn in her outline for her senior thesis at a private school for wealthy, artistically talented high schoolers. When the school sends Andi's failing grades to her absent father, he appears, puts her mother in a mental institute for help and wisks Andi off to Paris where he is doing dna testing on a well preserved heart which could prove to be that of the son of Louis XVI who was beheaded during the French Revolution. It had been Andi's plan to do a research paper on a somewhat obscure and creative guitarist of that same time period. Now her father has demanded that she turn in her outline and introduction to him by the end of her time in Paris. Andi is a gifted guitarist and very knowledgeable about the history and evolution of guitar music. She has been to Paris before, she knows the language and knows her way around. She and her father are staying with friends. Every one has his or her own busy schedul leaving Andi mostly on her own. The night of her arrival she is handed a guitar which had recently been found in the catacombs under Paris and is believed to be from the French Revolution Period. Andi discovers a secret compartment with a diary inside. From this diary, she has a very detailed account of the beginning and almost ending of the revolution including the death of the small son of Louis XVI heir to the French throne. Andi finds herself drawn into the story told in the diary until she is no longer present in real time. This happens while waiting in a historical library for books on her subject and also when with other gifted musicians she has met in Paris, perhaps aided by the use of antidepressants. She meets the musician subject of her thesis, becomes the young woman whose diary she is reading, and ultimately survives now much stronger than she was before. While the revolution was well researched and no doubt true to history, there is way too much detail for me and I suspect most teens. I enjoyed the history of guitar music woven within though. Andi, being gifted, bilingual, enrolled in a special school and accostumed to travelling to and in Paris may make this story hard for many teens to relate to however well written the novel. JDW 8/11

Wildthorn by Jane Eagland

Before woman's lib, it was believed that a fulfilled woman was a married woman, mother, and socially involved or involved with church causes. There was no place for single women, especially not those who wanted to be doctors or other professionals. Such a woman might be sent to do service with a family, sent to a convent or even sent to an asylum for the mentally ill as happened to Louisa if they in some way became inconvenient to the family.
Louisa always preferred studying science, riding horses and hanging with her father to "appropriate" womanly pursuits. With her father's support she had been studying for the entrance exams for the newly opened women's college. But her father died. Her beloved cousin for whom she had surprised feelings beyond that which was customary was marrying as a good girl should. Suddenly Louisa was in the way. She is told she is going to a family to be a governess but winds up in Wildthorn. Its an asylum of the worst kind with abusive attendants, bad food, nothing to occupy a person's mind, and no escape unless the person's who wanted Louisa out of the way decided to sign her release papers. Louisa's struggles at the asylum, how she escapes, how she learns about the conspiracy that put her there and her blossoming romance with one kind attendant makes for a fast riveting read. Its part historical fiction, part homosexual romance and part women's lib. This story will make all of us females glad to be living in the twentieth century. jdw 12/13/10