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Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy

Sammy Keyes

Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy by Wendelin Van Draanen, 1999.

At the end of the previous book in the series, Sammy was given a punishment from her school for causing a disturbance during an assembly that requires her to complete 20 hours of community service. She’s working off her volunteer hours at St. Mary’s Church under the supervision of Father Mayhew. When Sammy lived with her mother, they weren’t religious, and Sammy hadn’t even been baptized. However, her grandmother is much more religious, and she had Sammy baptized by Father Mayhew soon after Sammy moved in with her. Father Mayhew is kind and understanding with Sammy. There are also some nuns at St. Mary’s from an order called the Sisters of Mercy. They’re helping out in the soup kitchen. When elderly Sister Josephine sees that Sammy is painting a wall in Father Mayhew’s office, she complains that he’s always getting the services that the nuns ask for and never get. They’ve been asking to have the house where they live painted for years, and it still hasn’t happened.

Father Mayhew’s gratitude for Sammy’s help fades when a small ivory cross is stolen from his office, and he thinks that Sammy did it because she was in there. Sammy tells him that she didn’t take it, but he doesn’t believe her and sends her to go work in the soup kitchen for awhile. (He didn’t ask her to turn out her pockets before she left his office. I would have because that would settle the matter right there.) In the soup kitchen, Sammy sees another girl about her age who reminds her somewhat of herself, partly because of the high-top shoes she wear. Sammy wonders who the girl is and why she’s eating at the soup kitchen, but she isn’t able to talk to her there.

Later, Sammy discusses the missing cross with Father Mayhew again. This time, he seems less certain that Sammy took it, and Sammy asks him if it was something valuable that might have been sold for money or if someone who is angry with him could have taken it as revenge. The one person who seems angry with Father Mayhew is Sister Josephine, but he can’t picture her taking the cross. However, there are other people who might have a reason to be angry with Father Mayhew. Brother Phil, who works in the soup kitchen, wants to become a full priest, but Father Mayhew doesn’t think that he’s suited to it.

The thefts also continue. A couple of gold chalices are stolen from the church. The nuns who are part of the Sisters of Mercy turn out to be traveling and staying in a trailer, and they’re only staying at St. Mary’s temporarily to hold a fundraiser. They tell Father Mayhew that someone tried to break into their trailer, but they scared the thief off. One of the nuns ask Father Mayhew to keep an heirloom locket in his safe until she can deliver it to her niece.

Meanwhile, at school, Sammy is playing on one of her school’s two softball teams. Her school nemesis, Heather, plays on the other school team, so their feuding and rivalry has transferred to the school’s sports field.

This book is the first book in the series to bring up the subject of Sammy’s father. Sammy’s grandmother gives her a catcher’s mitt that once belonged to her father. Sammy’s mother was going to throw it out, but her grandmother rescued it from the trash, and it’s the only thing Sammy has that was once her father’s. She sees her love of playing catcher at softball as a connection to the father she’s never known. Sammy has never seen a picture of her father and doesn’t know his name, and her mother has admitted that he has no idea that Sammy exists. She has asked her mother about her father in the past, but her mother refuses to tell her who he is or what happened to him. All she has ever told Sammy is that she was young when they met and her relationship with him was a mistake. Sammy can’t help but feel that her mother things of her existence as a mistake as well, maybe even a bigger one than her relationship with her father. The fact that her mother has essentially abandoned her to pursue her dream of being an actress has left her feeling like her mother never really wanted her. Sammy has to stay with her grandmother, even though it means keeping her living arrangements a secret, because staying with her father isn’t even an option.

The next time that Sammy sees the mysterious girl in high-tops at the soup kitchen, she and her friends follow her to see where she lives. It turns out that she’s homeless and living in a cardboard box. This discovery raises some personal questions and concerns for Sammy. On the one hand, she’s unfortunate because her living situation is precarious and depends on not being caught in her grandmother’s apartment, which is meant only for seniors, but on the other, she does have her grandmother to rely on. This other poor girl doesn’t seem to have anyone. At one point, Sammy asks her grandmother about what would have happened to her if she hadn’t been able to take Sammy when her mother left. It’s an uncomfortable question for both of them because it raises the question of whether Sammy’s mother would have just abandoned her completely if she hadn’t had her mother willing to take her. Sammy’s mother doesn’t seems to care how awkward their living arrangement is because they have to keep Sammy’s presence in the apartment a secret. Without Sammy’s father in the picture, there is no one else but her grandmother to take her. There is also the constant question of what would happen to Sammy and her grandmother if someone manages to prove that Sammy is living with her against the rules. Sammy is better off than the homeless girl, not by much, but still better.

Later in the story, after Sammy’s beloved mitt is stolen, Sammy tells Hudson about everything that’s going on. She’s pretty sure that Heather is the mitt thief because she’s the one person who’s always doing awful things to her. Hudson points out that, in a way, Sammy is fortunate to know who she can trust and who she can’t, and she has one definite enemy. Holly has never really had anybody to trust before, and Father Mayhew has no idea who he can trust or not trust in his church. His thief is obviously one of the people who works with him on daily basis, someone who can come and go while seeming above suspicion, and Father Mayhew is only just beginning to realize that there are people around him he can’t trust as much as he thought.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

For awhile, Sammy suspects that the homeless girl who visits the soup kitchen might be the thief who is stealing things from the church, but she’s not. The girl, whose name is Holly, becomes a regular character in the series. She is a runaway foster child who’s had an even tougher life than Sammy. When she and Sammy talk, she explains how she was abused in previous foster homes, which is why she ran away to live on her own. At one point, she is attacked by a man, and Sammy has to help fight him off. The girls realize that Holly can’t keep camping out on her own, and Sammy helps her find a place to stay with people who turn out to be able to provide a much more stable home for her, which is how she remains a character for the rest of the series. Holly begins attending school with Sammy and her friends, with her new foster family making up a story about how she transferred from New Mexico. Her new home seems to be a kind secretive foster home, not unlike Sammy’s living arrangements. Her new foster family doesn’t seem to try to legalize their custody of Holly (not in this book, anyway), possibly out of fear of her being taken away and put in other abusive or dysfunctional foster homes in the flawed system she came from. There is also a standalone book which focuses specifically on Holly called Runaway, which explains more about her personal history. Some of the things that happened to Holly are an indication that this series isn’t meant for young children. I would say that it’s best for tweens and up, probably about around the middle school level.

One of my favorite characters in this series is Hudson Graham, a retired old man who acts like a grandfather to Sammy. She often goes to see him when she needs help and advice. He is knowledgeable on an eclectic range of topics, and he has a massive private library that can answer most of Sammy’s questions. In this book, Sammy thinks about how, even though she and Hudson have talked about many things together, including his wide-ranging hobbies, she doesn’t really know that much about his past, even what he used to do for a living before he retired. Because he has a collection of foreign language dictionaries and recording devices, Sammy thinks that he might have once worked for the CIA or something. When the people who own the dog grooming business down the street lose the key to their safe because a dog ate it, Sammy asks Hudson what they can go, and he tells her some fascinated facts about safes and how to get into them. The fact that he knows about that suggested to me that he probably worked in law enforcement or security at some point. My thought is that he might have once been a private investigator because they do security work and would have some basic law knowledge and use devices that Hudson has, like recording machines and cameras. My next guess would be that he was a journalist, also because of the recording devices and cameras and because journalists can write on a wide range of topics, giving Hudson his eclectic knowledge and the need for his own private research library. Aspects of Sammy’s life and the lives of people she knows add extra mystery to the story. Hudson’s past isn’t explained in this book in the series, and I’m not sure if it ever is.

Posted on by TracyC

The Lottery Rose

LotteryRoseThe Lottery Rose by Irene Hunt, 1976.

Young Georgie Burgess has been abused his entire life by his mother, Rennie, and her boyfriend, Steve (who is not Georgie’s father, whose identity is unknown, Rennie says that she is a widow).  Rennie is an alcoholic, and she and Steve (who is the source of most of the violence in Georgie’s life) once deliberately burned the side of Georgie’s face when he was a baby because he wouldn’t stop crying and they were angry that they had run out of whisky.  Sometimes, they tie him up in a closet for days at a time with no food.  Other times, they beat him, even leaving scars.  When Rennie is confronted by the school nurse about Georgie’s injuries, she claims that Georgie is a problem child who gets into fights.  Georgie’s teacher believes that because Georgie is always acting up and doesn’t appear to learn anything, although he is actually smarter than he pretends to be.  Because the other adults in Georgie’s life either do not see his condition for what it is or do not want to acknowledge the truth of it, it is a long time before he gets the help he really needs.

Georgie’s early life is bleak, and at first, his future seems equally bleak.  The only people who seem to care about him at all are the school librarian and Mrs. Sims, who works at the grocery store.  Georgie’s real love in life is flowers.   He likes to borrow a book from the school library about flowers, and one day, he enters a drawing at the store and wins a rose bush of his very own!

It’s the best thing that ever happened to Georgie, but shortly afterward, Steve beats him so badly that the police are finally called.  Georgie is taken away from his mother, and for the first time, his life becomes different.  Georgie insists on bringing his precious rose bush with him when the police take him away, and it becomes instrumental in helping him reshape his life.

For a time, Georgie has to stay in the hospital to recover from his injuries, and then he stays with Mrs. Sims.  Unfortunately, as much as Mrs. Sims and her husband care for Georgie, they can’t afford to take care of him.  Instead, Georgie is sent to a Catholic boarding school with his new teacher and guardian, Sister Mary Angela.  Sister Mary Angela assures Georgie that he will be taken care of at the school and so will his rose bush.

Georgie thinks the school is ugly, but there is a beautiful house nearby with a beautiful garden.  It belongs to Mrs. Harper, who lost her husband and one of her sons in a tragic car accident.  Although Georgie isn’t supposed to go there, he can’t help himself.  It seems like the the perfect place for his rose bush . . . and maybe even for himself.

The tragedies and descriptions of child abuse in this story make it inappropriate for young children.  This would be a good book for kids at the middle school level, probably age twelve and up.

Georgie, who has never really known kindness in his life, blossoms like a rose at the school, making new friends for the first time and coming to terms with his past.  At the same time, Mrs. Harper, who is still suffering from the loss of her husband and son and also loses her other son (a child with developmental disabilities) during the course of the book, finds her heart warmed by Georgie.  Georgie has desperately needed a mother who acts like a real mother and really loves him, and Mrs. Harper comes to realize that she also needs a boy like Georgie to love.  While he is not a replacement for the sons she has lost, he does help to fill an empty place in her life, and the two of them become the family that each of them needs.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Kathleen: The Celtic Knot

KathleenKathleen: The Celtic Knot by Siobhan Parkinson, 2003.

Twelve-year-old Kathleen lives with her family in Dublin, Ireland in 1937. Like the rest of the world, Ireland is suffering under the Great Depression, and Kathleen’s father has been having trouble finding work. Her mother helps to support the family by working as a midwife.

One day, when Kathleen’s mother is off delivering a baby, Kathleen accidentally burns the porridge at breakfast, making her and her sisters late for school. Although they should have been marked as being on time, they are considered one minute late because the nun’s watch was fast. Discipline is harsh at the Catholic school they attend, and after a harsh lecture to Kathleen, the headmistress, Mother Rosario, calls for a conference with her mother. Kathleen is very upset about it, but Mother Rosario softens somewhat and says that she merely wants to see that everything is alright with Kathleen’s family because a nice girl like her shouldn’t be acting up.  Kathleen still worries because she knows that the nuns look down on poor families like theirs and consider their authority higher than the parents of the children they teach.  They are often unaware of the circumstances that families live in.

However, Kathleen’s mother isn’t fazed by the nuns’ attitude and is blunt with the Mother Rosario, telling it like it is. The headmistress does show that she has some compassion and is somewhat aware of their circumstances because she says that Kathleen’s lateness was only part of the reason she wanted this meeting. She has guessed that Kathleen’s father is looking for work, and there is a position for an assistant gardener open at the school. It doesn’t pay much, and it’s not as good as her father’s old job was before the factory where he worked closed, but he agrees to take it because it’s better than nothing.

The headmistress also says that she has noticed that Kathleen is musically-talented. She likes to sing and has a good voice. Mother Rosario thinks it would be a good idea for her to take piano or dance lessons. The family doesn’t have a piano, so the headmistress suggest that Kathleen join the Irish dancing lessons because it’s a wholesome activity that reflects her heritage and that would keep her out of trouble. Kathleen’s mother isn’t big on heritage, but she agrees that dancing might be a good activity for Kathleen.

Kathleen isn’t happy about the dance lessons at first because the other girls who are involved are snobs. But, once she tries it, she realizes that she actually loves dancing. The problem is that the lessons aren’t free, like the other girls told her. At first, Kathleen feels cheated, finding out that she loves something that she can’t have after all, but her teacher says that she’s talented, so she offers Kathleen some free lessons anyway. She’s been looking for new talent so that her dancers can do well in the next dancing competition, and she doesn’t want to let a promising dancer like Kathleen slip through her fingers.

The snobby girls in class are all the more irritated when Kathleen is among those chosen to enter the next competition, but everyone also knows that there is one more obstacle for Kathleen: she doesn’t have a proper dancing costume or any money to buy one. She prays for one, even promising God that she’d become a nun if he gives her the costume she wants. Her mother has her eye on some beautiful cloth that she hopes to buy as a remnant, but the cloth gets snapped up by some of the wealthier, snobby girls, and her mother comes down with a serious illness shortly before the competition.

Kathleen begins to think that she was wicked for being so concerned about dancing and costumes when there are much more serious things in life. However, her aunt, Polly, understands how she feels and comes up with a plan to make the needed costume for Kathleen, using her favorite book, Gone With the Wind, as inspiration. Remember what Scarlett O’Hara did when she needed a new dress and couldn’t afford one?

KathleenDancing

One of the themes that runs through the story is questions and answers. Kathleen has a lot of questions about life. She knows that her mother deliveries babies for money, but she doesn’t really understand much about it, and her mother doesn’t answer the questions she asks. In fact, Kathleen notices that most of the adults she knows (with the exception of her father) brush aside her questions about the way the way the world works or the things people do because they simply don’t want to be bothered with them. They have too many concerns of their own, and they don’t really know most of the answers themselves. It kind of contrasts with the answers that Mother Rosario demands from Kathleen and immediately dismisses upon getting. Most of the time, she doesn’t really want to bother with answering questions or even dealing with the answers to questions she’s just asked. Only once does she answer a question that Kathleen had asked about St. Patrick, and Kathleen is astonished at getting an answer about something.

I have to admit that the attitudes about questions and answers from most of the adults in the story really irritated me, especially the way Mother Rosario demanded answers from Kathleen about her lateness and then dismissed everything that Kathleen said, angry that she had “answers.”  I’ve met people like that before in real life, and they’re just as illogical and crazy-making as this headmistress. I’m not talking about teachers who refuse to listen to flimsy excuses like “the dog ate my homework,” but people who get angry at others who have real explanations just because they have real explanations. People who demand to know the reasons why things happen and then immediately reject any explanation offered without a real reason for doing so are obnoxious. I’ve encountered people like that before, and it’s hard to have anything resembling a meaningful conversation with them.   They don’t want to talk to you; they just want to yell or lecture at you.  They don’t really care what the answers or explanations are for anything, and no answer would make any difference to them because what they really want is for the other person to just feel bad. It’s an unethical one-upmanship tactic, and it loses my respect the moment I hear someone use it because I recognize what they’re attempting to do. It’s so obvious, but frustrating at the same time (Kathleen in the story wonders why Mother Rosario is trying to torture her in this way) because there’s nothing you can say to stop the other person once they start (at least, I haven’t figured it out). Kathleen’s approach was probably the most effective.  She just stopped talking and prepared herself for the headmistress to hit her, which caused the headmistress to wake up a bit to the fact that the message that she was sending to Kathleen was that her only intentions were to hurt her.  Fortunately, those were not her only intentions, but I have to admit that I never really had any respect for Mother Rosario after that, in spite of what she did to help Kathleen’s family.  You can tell this is one of my pet peeves.  One-upmanship really bothers me in all of its forms, and I have even less time for that kind of nonsense than these characters do for answering a twelve-year-old’s questions.  At least you can talk to a twelve-year-old. Getting back to that, part of Kathleen’s trouble with some of her questions is that her elders often underestimate her, thinking that she’s really too young to understand anything, but the fact that she’s asking questions says that she’s really not. In fact, she might even be putting more thought into some issues than the people who have decided that some things aren’t worth thinking about in the first place.

Another theme of the story is growing up and changing goals in life. By discovering her talent as a dancer, Kathleen has found something that she would like to dedicate her life to, and if she becomes a dance teacher herself, it would give her a job to do in her future that could make her life better. Her aunt, Polly, who is twenty years old, also changes her mind about what she wants in life. As a single young woman, she likes to go out and have fun with her small earnings, hoping to meet a man as elegant as Rhett Butler.   However, when her latest young man turns out to be a cad, she accepts a proposal from the very shy but much nicer young man who she had previous thought wasn’t handsome enough. Polly’s experiences make her realize that handsomeness by itself isn’t much, and she and her new husband have plans for building a life together. At first, Kathleen is disappointed because she and Polly had talked about leading a carefree life together as single ladies when Kathleen was grown, but Polly explains to her that things will be better this way and that grown-ups have to build real lives for themselves, not live on dreams alone. Kathleen is still in the process of discovering the possibilities that life might hold for her and the talents that she can use to build her life.

I also found the parts about Irish history and politics during 1930s interesting.  One of the reasons why Kathleen’s family isn’t big on the Irish heritage movement is because her grandfather fought during World War I and wasn’t treated well as a veteran when he returned. During the meeting with Mother Rosario, Kathleen’s mother is blunt about her views on things, and Mother Rosario is surprised how much she understands of politics, showing that she looks down on poor people (possibly the source of her general rudeness and bullying tactics, even when she’s trying to be helpful – she’s decided that she’s superior and will remain so, whether she’s right or wrong), thinking that they aren’t smart enough to understand what’s going on around them.  The story makes it clear that the nuns at school are often out of touch with what ordinary families go through in their daily lives.  They underestimate what people know or read about, they have trouble understanding their daily struggles with money and how they are barely able to keep food on the table, and they seem unable to grasp what it’s like to be part of a family where any family member’s actions can affect all of the others.  For me, they were far more aggravating than the snobby little girl characters because I usually expect adults of a certain age to have grown out of some of these behaviors.

While reading the story, I was kind of comparing Kathleen’s circumstances in Ireland in the 1930s to life in America during the Great Depression, and many of their struggles were the same.  I was also kind of fascinated by Polly’s fascination with Gone With the Wind because it shows how pieces of culture and entertainment could become popular in other countries during this time.

This book is part of a series by the same publishers of the American Girls Books.  There is a section in the back of the book with historical information about the period.

KathleenHistorical

Posted on by TracyC

The Bassumtyte Treasure

BassumtyteTreasureThe Bassumtyte Treasure by Jane Louise Curry, 1978.

When young Tommy Bassumtyte’s parents died, he went to live with his grandfather. However, his grandfather is now dead, and he is living with his 92-year-old great-aunt, who is in a wheelchair, and her 72-year-old daughter, who has recently had her driver’s license revoked due to her poor eyesight. Although the pair of them have taken good care of Tommy, neighbors have become concerned that they will not be able to do so for much longer because of their age and failing health. Rather than see Tommy sent to a foster home, they decide that he must go to the man who Tommy learns should really be his legal guardian, a distant cousin also named Thomas who lives in the family’s ancestral home, Boxleton House, in England.

The elder Thomas Bassumtyte, who should have taken Tommy when his grandfather passed away, has also since died, but his son, also named Thomas, agrees to take him. Tommy is quickly shipped off to England before there can be a custody hearing in the United States about him because the relatives fear that some official might try to prevent Tommy from being sent out of the country. Tommy is eager to go because he remembers fantastic stories that his grandfather told him about Boxleton House. The current Thomas Bassumtyte also lives there, although the place has become rather run-down, and he fears that he will not be able to keep the place much longer. Thomas was a mountain climber, but he was injured in a fall and hasn’t been able to work much since. He tells Tommy that the two of them might have to move when he is fully recovered and can do more work for the Foreign Office, but Tommy loves Boxleton House from the first moment he sees it and wants to stay.

According to the lore of Boxleton House, a distant ancestor of theirs hid a treasure there, but no one has been able to find it. If young Tommy and Thomas can find it, it would solve many of their problems, and they would be able to keep the house and restore it. All young Tommy has is the mysterious rhyme that his grandfather told him and the strange medallion that his great-grandfather brought with him when he went to the United States in the late 1800s. Thomas tells him that the treasure was supposedly hidden by a distant ancestor of theirs who was fond of riddles, called Old Thomas.

The Bassumtytes were secretly Catholic during the reign of Elizabeth I. Old Thomas was alive then and had a son called Tall Thomas. Tall Thomas traveled frequently and was mysterious about the places he went. One night, he returned to Boxleton House with a young baby, who he said was his son. He had married in secret, and his young wife had died shortly after giving birth. Tall Thomas also brought her body back to Boxleton for burial. However, that wasn’t Tall Thomas’s only secret. Although he remarried, giving his son a stepmother, and lived on for a number of years, he was eventually executed for smuggling messages for the captive Catholic queen, Mary, Queen of Scots. The family was stripped of its noble title and only barely managed to hang onto their house and land. If there was a treasure hidden during this time, it was probably something that the Bassumtytes were afraid would be confiscated by the queen’s soldiers as punishment for the family’s disloyalty or something that Mary had given to Tall Thomas to hide for her.

As Thomas tells Tommy more about the house and the family’s history, he points out Tommy’s uncanny resemblance to Small Thomas, Tall Thomas’s son, as shown in an old painting. Tommy feels a strange connection to Small Thomas, and begins seeing and hearing strange things. An older woman comforts him in the middle of the night, having him recite the same rhyme that his grandfather taught him. A small painting later reveals that this woman was Small Thomas’s grandmother. She appears to Tommy other times, giving him a glimpse back in time and clues to solve the puzzles of Boxleton House.

It is only when Thomas accepts the advice of a family friend who works for a museum that they come to understand the full significance of their family’s heirlooms and the hidden treasure. The treasure may not be quite what the Bassumtytes have always believed it was, but then, the Bassumtytes themselves aren’t quite who they always thought they were, either.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.