A Gathering Light

By Jennifer Donnelly

“When summer comes to the North Woods, time slows down. And some days it stops altogether. The sky, grey 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.”

It took me a while to like this book. The first few chapters were dragging and I almost felt like giving up but, for some reason, I stuck to the story and it paid off big time in the end. It is a book about race, class, wealth and poverty, and also about prejudice and the power of words.

The story is based on the real-life murder of Grace Brown, which took place at turn of the last century. Seventeen-year-old Mattie Gokey, who is torn between her desire to be a writer and the excitement of her first romance, is spending the summer of 1906 away from home working the busy holiday season at the Glenmore hotel, the finest hotel on all of Big Moose Lake. The money she is earning will help her family maintain their run-down far, and she is also saving up to set up home with her fiancé.

One day a young woman is found drowned in the nearby lake. She gives Mattie a bundle of letters which Mattie must promise to burn. Instead she begins to read Grace Brown’s letters, revealing the secret behind the circumstances of her death. Mattie’s own dilemmas and choices are quietly reflected in the life of Grace Brown and her tale merges with Mattie’s own story, giving her the courage to define her own future.