Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

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 · 1 Comment

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg, 1967.

Twelve-year-old Claudia Kincaid is bored with her dull suburban life in Connecticut with her parents and her brothers. Her life also often seems unfair, like she has more responsibilities than her brothers do and she has more chores than her others friends. Basically, Claudia is bored and feeling unsatisfied with her life. She wants to get away from it all and have a little adventure … although not too much adventure because Claudia isn’t the overly-adventurous type.

Claudia is cautious and methodical. When she plans to run away from home, she carefully plans every step and invites her more adventurous nine-year-old brother Jamie to go with her, both for the companionship and because he is a tightwad and has the cash necessary to fund their adventure. Although Claudia and Jamie bicker as siblings, they’re closer to each other than to either of their other brothers. Jamie eagerly accepts Claudia’s proposition to run away, although at first, he’s a little disappointed when he finds out where they’re going.

Claudia plans for them to run away to New York City because, as she puts it, it’s “a good place to get lost.” The city is so big, Claudia is sure that two runaway children will be easily overlooked. She’s also found a great place for them to stay during their adventure: the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Claudia loves comfort, convenience, and beauty, and the museum can offer all of that without the fees of staying in a hotel. There are exhibits of furniture, which provide them with a bed to sleep in, and interesting exhibits to keep them entertained and educated, and all they have to do is evade the security guards. At first, Jamie thinks that sounds a little too tame, but their adventure soon proves to be exciting and challenging, with enough mystery to satisfy both of them.

Claudia and Jamie develop routines for sneaking around the museum, evading the guards, hiding the backpacks and instrument cases that hold their clothes, and raiding the coins in the fountain for extra money. One day, while they’re hiding in the restrooms and waiting for the museum staff to leave, the staff set up a new exhibit for an angel sculpture sold to the museum by the wealthy and mysterious widow Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, who is actually the person narrating Claudia and Jamie’s story in a letter to her lawyer.

Claudia develops a fascination for the angel and a desire to learn the truth about the theory that the statue was made by Michelangelo. Between the two children, Claudia is the more imaginative and romantic, but Jamie’s logical mind and zest for adventure serve them well as they delve deeper into the mystery. They do learn something important at the museum, but to get the full truth, they have to leave their planned hiding place in the museum and go see Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler herself.

Mrs. Frankweiler is a delightfully eccentric student of human nature, who is fascinated by the young runaways who come to her for answers to a mystery hundreds of years old. In exchange for the details of their exploits, Mrs. Frankweiler gives the children a chance to locate the answers they’re seeking in her strange, mixed-up files. In the process, the children learn a secret that gives both of them the sense of being part of something secret and exciting and much bigger than their ordinary, hum-drum lives, which is what they were originally looking for when they ran away from home.

The book is a Newbery Award winner, and it is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive (many copies).

My Reaction

During the course of the adventure, Claudia and Jamie become closer to each other than they were before they ran away from home. They learn a little more about each other and themselves, and neither of them is quite the same as they were before they started, which is at the heart of Claudia’s reasons for wanting to run away from home in the first place. The language and descriptions in the book are colorful, which is part of the reason why this book is popular to read in schools.

There were two movies made of this story. One is a made-for-tv movie version from 1995, although it changed some of the details from the original story. In the 1995 movie, there is a scene with Jamie getting sick and Claudia worrying about him and taking care of him that never happened in the original book. Also, in the movie, Claudia stops Jamie from taking the coins from the fountain when they had no qualms about raiding the fountain for money in the book. At the end of the book, the children don’t tell their parents where they were hiding when they return home, but in the movie, the parents do find out. There is also an older movie from 1973 which is sometimes called The Hideaways.

Posted on by TracyC

Rosy Noses, Freezing Toes

Pee Wee Scouts

#13 Rosy Noses, Freezing Toes by Judy Delton, 1990.

At one of the scout meetings, Mrs. Peters, the troop leader, says that her antique vase is missing. It’s a family heirloom, and Mrs. Peters wants to ask the scouts if they know anything about its disappearance or if they have any idea of what could have happened to it. None of them knows, but they’re fascinated by the mystery. After they search the house and can’t find it, Mrs. Peters says that she’ll just have to report its disappearance to the insurance company. Mrs. Peters is willing to let the matter go at that, but the scouts keep wondering what happened to the vase and if one of them could have taken it.

Mrs. Peters tells the scouts that the next badge they will earn will be their music badge. To earn the badge, the children will have to sing or play an instrument or tell the group about the life of a composer. Some of the children already play instruments and know what they’re going to do, but others aren’t sure. Since it’s December, Mrs. Peters suggests that some of them could sing popular Christmas songs or a Hanukkah song.

Sonny Betz declares that he doesn’t want to participate because he can’t play an instrument and over the next few days, he seems upset and nasty with people. Molly asks him what the matter is, and Sonny tells her that his mother is forcing him to take violin lessons. Mrs. Betz has always wanted Sonny to learn to play the violin, and his new violin teacher has assured her that Sonny will be able to learn the first line of Jingle Bells in time for the scouts’ music show, even though it’s coming up fast. Sonny isn’t happy about it, and to make him feel better, Molly tells him that he’s lucky because nobody else will be playing the violin and it will make him different. Unfortunately, the other kids tease him and call him “Maestro,” so he starts feeling bad.

Molly doesn’t like the way the others keep teasing Sonny, and when Tracy says that Sonny is a baby, Molly tells her that it’s not his fault because his mother is the one who makes him take violin lessons and keep the training wheels on his bike even though he’s in the second grade and all the other things that people tease him about. Mrs. Betz doesn’t realize how much Sonny hates some of the things that she makes him do and how much the other kids tease Sonny about these things. Molly overhears her mother saying that Sonny will “be a handful by the time he gets to high school,” probably because she’s imagining that Sonny will rebel against all things his mother has been making him do once he’s a teenager. Actually, it’s not going to take that long.

Mrs. Peters uses the insurance money from her vase to buy a piano. The scouts’ music show goes okay at first, although none of the kids are spectacular at music. Molly, Mary Beth, and Lisa paint their noses red and sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Kevin whistles. Roger plays White Christmas on the drums with no other accompaniment, confusing everyone about what song he’s actually playing. Poor Sonny has to go last, when everyone is starting to get tired of the entertainment, but he doesn’t play well. The other scouts cover their ears, and the screeching of the violin makes the dog bark and Mrs. Peters’s baby cry. Sonny is so upset that he runs away from the show and has a fit.

The next day, Molly learns that Sonny has run away from home completely, leaving behind a note that he’s heading to Alaska. Everyone is searching for Sonny and getting worried about him being outside alone in the snow. However, Molly soon discovers that Sonny hasn’t gone as far as everyone fears and he’s certainly not on his way to Alaska. She discovers Sonny hiding in her family’s bathtub. Sonny explains to her that he didn’t have the money to go to Alaska, but he couldn’t bring himself to go home, and he picked Molly’s house to hide in because Molly is the only one who didn’t tease at him. Molly promises not to turn him in, but she says that he won’t be able to stay in her bathtub forever. His mother has called the police to report his disappearance, and Molly’s parents are bound to find him eventually. Sonny swears that he can’t go home because he hates playing the violin so much. What can Molly do to help him change his mind?

I didn’t like the way the other scouts were so mean to Sonny in the book. Sonny does do childish things, like being mean to the younger kids on the playground when he’s upset and throwing fits when things go wrong. However, Molly tries to be understanding with Sonny, even when he’s being fussy and whining, and she recognizes that Sonny is in a difficult position. His mother has certain expectations of him, and Sonny doesn’t think that anything will change her mind. The way things work out, though, makes it seem like Sonny never really explained to his mother how upset he was about the violin lessons and maybe not even how upset he’s been about some other things. Part of Sonny’s difficulty and the reason why he seems babyish to the other kids is that he seems to have trouble managing and articulating his emotions, including standing up for himself and what he really wants. Some of the other scouts help Molly to convince Sonny that running away isn’t the solution, and Molly calls Mrs. Betz to tell her that Sonny is okay but won’t come home until she promises that he can stop playing the violin. Sonny declares that he wants to see that in writing, and his mother gladly writes him a note that says that he doesn’t have to play the violin again.

So, what about the antique vase mystery from the beginning of the story? Before the end of the book, they do locate the missing vase (not really stolen, more misplaced and forgotten), but Molly accidentally breaks it. Mrs. Peters says that it’s okay because, with the vase broken, she doesn’t have to give the money back to the insurance company, and she gets to keep her new piano. She’s been wanting a piano, and the truth is that she never really liked the vase, even though it was a family heirloom. Yay? Merry Christmas!

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

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Changes for Samantha

American Girls

Changes for Samantha by Valerie Tripp, 1988.

This book is part of the Samantha, An American Girl series. This is the last book in the original series of Samantha’s stories and explains the changes in the lives of Samantha and her friends, especially Nellie. When Samantha met Nellie in the first book in the series, Nellie was a poor girl working as a servant girl in a neighboring house. Later, Nellie and her family moved to Samantha’s town, Mount Bedford, and Nellie and her sisters were able to attend school for the first time.

Now, Samantha has moved to New York City to live with her Uncle Gard and his new wife, Aunt Cornelia. Samantha likes living with them, although their housekeeper, Gertrude, is strict and often makes her feel like she’s doing things wrong. Samantha’s grandmother, a widow, has remarried to her long-time friend, the Admiral. Samantha’s life has changed considerably since the first book. Since her move to New York City, Samantha hasn’t seen Nellie or her sisters, but their lives have also changed, and not for the better.

When the book begins, Samantha and Aunt Cornelia are making Valentines to give to friends and family. Samantha receives a letter from Nellie that says that her parents have died of the flu and their employer, Mrs. Van Sicklen, is sending her and her sisters to New York City to live with her Uncle Mike. Nellie says that she’ll try to visit Samantha in New York City soon. Samantha is upset to hear that Nellie’s parents are dead, but Uncle Gard and Aunt Cornelia reassure her that Nellie’s uncle will take care of her and that she’ll soon be living much closer to Samantha.

After some time goes by and Samantha doesn’t hear any more from Nellie, she begins to worry about her. Uncle Gard decides to call Mrs. Van Sicklen and find out Nellie’s new address, but she doesn’t know where Nellie’s uncle, Mike O’Malley, lives. All Mrs. Van Sicklen knows is that he lives on 17th or 18th Street, but New York City is so big, that doesn’t help much. Uncle Gard and Aunt Cornelia say that maybe Nellie has had to get a job or look after her sisters and that she’s just been too busy to visit, but Samantha is still worried that something is very wrong.

Samantha decides to start asking around 17th and 18th Streets to see if she can locate Mike O’Malley, and she finds a chestnut seller who knows Mike O’Malley. However, he warns Samatha not to get involved with him because Mike O’Malley is a “hooligan.” Samantha worries about that, but it’s just another reason for her to want to check on Nellie. When she reaches the apartment where Mike O’Malley last lived, he isn’t there anymore. His neighbor explains that Mike O’Malley was a drunk who simply abandoned his nieces in his old apartment. The neighbor took the girls in for a while, but she is a poor woman with children of her own to raise, so she had to turn Nellie and her sisters over to an orphanage, the Coldrock House for Homeless Girls.

Samantha tells her aunt and uncle what she’s learned, and they’re upset that she went to such a dangerous part of the city alone. However, Aunt Cornelia agrees to take Samantha to the orphanage to see Nellie. The directoress, Miss Frouchy, is a stern and sneaky woman, but she agrees to let Samantha see Nellie, even though it isn’t a visitors’ day. It is difficult for the girls to speak candidly with Miss Frouchy watching them and monitoring everything that Nellie says. When Aunt Cornelia asks if Nellie and her sisters need anything, Miss Frouchy interrupts and says that they don’t. However, Samantha notes how thin Nellie looks and suspects that there is more going on than Nellie is being allowed to say, and Miss Frouchy even confiscates the cookies meant for Nellie and her sisters right in front of Aunt Cornelia and Samantha.

Aunt Cornelia asks Miss Frouchy for a tour of the orphanage so that Nellie and Samantha can be alone, and so the girls are able to speak openly. Nellie confirms that things are hard at the orphanage and her sister, Bridget, isn’t strong. Miss Frouchy thinks that Bridget is lazy and doesn’t want to work, so Nellie tries to cover Bridget’s chores as best she can. Samantha says that Nellie could come and stay with her and her aunt and uncle, but Nellie says that they probably don’t need any more maids. Samantha offers to hide Nellie and her sisters, but Nellie thinks that plan is too risky. More than anything, Nellie wants to keep her sisters together. She says with a little more training, she could find a job as a maid and support them.

Samantha returns to the orphanage again with her aunt and uncle to visit all three girls, and she and Nellie arrange to meet secretly at the time when Nellie is supposed to take the fireplace ashes out to the alley for disposal. At their next meeting, Samantha finds out that Miss Frouchy took the gloves that they had given Nellie and even punished her for having them because she said that she must have stolen the gloves. However, there is worse to come. Soon, Nellie tells Samantha that she has been chosen to be sent out west on the Orphan Train, but because her sisters are too young to go, they’ll be left in New York alone. With the sisters about to be split up, Samantha’s plan to help the girls run away and hide is looking better.

Together, Nellie and Samantha help to sneak the younger girls out of the orphanage, and Samantha hides the three of them in an upstairs room in the aunt and uncle’s house that isn’t being used. She sneaks food and toys upstairs to them, and Nellie sneaks out during the day to go looking for work. However, Gertrude soon gets suspicious about how much food Samantha seems to be eating and how she seems to be sneaking around with it. When the girls are finally caught, Samantha owes her aunt and uncle some explanations, but admitting the truth of what has happened changes things for the better for all of the girls.

In the movie version of the Samantha series, which combined all the stories from the Samantha books into one, the story ends at Christmas, but in the book, it’s Valentine’s Day. The Christmas ending is nice, but Valentine’s Day does make for a nice difference, and love is appropriate to the theme of the story. Uncle Gard and Aunt Cornelia end up adopting Nellie and her sisters, so they officially become part of Samantha’s family. Unlike other characters in the story, who see the orphans as either an inconvenience or a source of cheap labor, Uncle Gard and Aunt Cornelia genuinely love them and want to raise them.

Something that struck me about the book was that both Nellie and Samantha are orphans, but their lives were very different at the beginning of the story because Samantha is from a wealthy family with an uncle who loves her and Nellie is a poor girl with an irresponsible uncle. If Samantha had been poor, she might have been destined for an orphanage or the orphan train herself. Because she wasn’t and because her family looks after children well and is willing to share what they have with others, Samantha has a secure future, and Nellie and her sisters become part of their family.

The book ends with a section of historical information about all the changes taking place in Samantha’s time, from technological changes, such as the first airplanes and new cars, to the increasing sizes of cities and new immigrants arriving in the United States.

As girls like Samantha grew up, society continued to change. In earlier books, Samantha’s grandmother talked about how young ladies aren’t supposed to work but learn how to be ladies and take care of a household. By the time Samantha was an adult, in the 1910s and 1920s, it was becoming more common for women to hold others jobs, although they would often stop working when they got married so they could focus on raising their children. The profession of social work evolved to help care for children like Nellie and her sisters. Some social workers also helped immigrants to learn English and train for new jobs when the came to the United States. The book specifically mentions Jane Addams, who founded the settlement house, Hull House.

Change is a major theme of all of the American Girl books, and a girl like Samantha would have seen some drastic changes in the ways that people lived as she got older. Over time, fewer immigrants looked for jobs as domestic servants, and newer forms of household technology, like washing machines, made it easier for housewives to do more of their domestic chores themselves. The section of historical information ends with examples of the changes in styles of women’s clothing through the 1920s, explaining how the changes in clothing styles were part of the changes in the types of lives the women wearing them were leading.

Although the book doesn’t go into these details, I would just like to point out how old Samantha would have been at various points in the 20th century. She was born in 1894, and ten years old in 1904, so that means that she would have been:

  • 23 years old when the US entered World War I in 1917
  • 26 years old when the 19th Amendment granted women’s suffrage in the United States in 1920
  • 30 years old in 1924 (Jazz age and Prohibition)
  • 35 years old when the stock market crashed in 1929, the beginning of the Great Depression
  • 47 years old in 1941, when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, and the US entered World War II, and 50 years old in 1944, when the Molly, An American Girl series takes place.
  • In her 50s during the early days of the Cold War. She would have to live to be 95 to see the end of it.
  • In her 60s through her early 70s during the Civil Rights Movement.

I like to think about these things because it puts history in perspective, and it gives us some sense of what Samantha’s future life might have been like. When she was a young woman, she may have joined the women’s suffrage movement with her Aunt Cornelia. She probably knew young men her age who went to fight in World War I. (Eddie, the annoying boy who lived next door to Samantha’s grandmother, would have been old enough to fight and may have been a WWI soldier himself.) Perhaps, Samantha’s future husband was a soldier. When she was older, Samantha could have either joined the temperance movement behind Prohibition or visited a speakeasy or at least knew people who did. It’s difficult to say what happened to Samantha’s family during the Great Depression. Depending on their professions and what they may have invested their money in, they may have lost their fortunes in the stock market crash, or they may have ridden out the whole thing in relative comfort. By World War II, Samantha may have had a son who was old enough to fight. One of the things I find interesting about historical novels with children is imagining what their future lives may have been like, and Samantha was born at a time when she would have witnessed many major events throughout her future life. The book shows how women’s fashions changed as Samantha grew up, but I’m fascinated by the events in Samantha’s life that I know must be coming, just because of when she was born. By the end of her life, the world would be a very different place from what she knew when she was young.

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

Posted on by TracyC

Mystery in the Old Cave

Mystery in the Old Cave cover

Mystery in the Old Cave by Helen Fuller Orton, 1950.

Mystery in the Old Cave nut gathering

Andy and Joan Draper are excited about spending the fall and winter in the country. Usually, they live in an apartment in New York City and only go to their family’s vacation home in Vermont during the summer. However, this year, some friends of their father will be moving to New York, and they’ll need a place to stay because they are having trouble finding an apartment of their own. The children’s father has decided to rent their apartment to his friends while his family stays in Vermont. That means that the children will have to go to school in Vermont, but the children like the idea because they will be able to do things that they normally can’t do when the seasons change, like gathering nuts. When the first frosts come, the hickory nuts on the trees fall to the ground, making it easy to collect them.

After Andy and Joan collect nuts for the first time, they decide to store them in the old sugarhouse on the property. Normally, the family doesn’t use the sugarhouse for anything, but it used to be used during the times when their vacation house was a working farm and people tapped the maple trees for their sap to make maple syrup. They would process the sap in the sugarhouse. Sometimes, farm hands also used to sleep there during the harvest.

Soon, the children begin to suspect that there’s a stranger hanging around the property. Their dog, Ponto, barks at someone the children don’t see and comes running back to them, acting like someone kicked him. Later, a strange man approaches them and asks them if they know anything about a cave in the area. Andy and Joan don’t know anything about a cave. The man tells them that it’s supposed to be near the old sugarhouse, but if the children haven’t seen it, it might have caved in or something. He seems very secretive and doesn’t want the children to tell anyone that he’s been asking questions, and the children wonder if he could be the one who kicked their dog earlier. Later, someone (perhaps this strange man) steals many of the nuts that the children gathered and even some cookies. The children change their minds about storing things in the sugarhouse and decide to keep their gathered nuts in an unused room in the main house. The only clue to the identity of who’s been sneaking around is a red pencil that the person dropped.

Mystery in the Old Cave store

The children make friends with a boy named Phil who lives nearby. Phil is an orphan who lives with his Cousin John (who he sometimes calls Uncle John because he is so much older), a mean and stingy old man who doesn’t treat him very well and makes him work hard around the house instead of going to play after school with the other kids. He doesn’t even replace Phil’s clothes when they get old and torn. Phil gets a job at the local store to earn some money for a new sweater, but Cousin John even confiscates Phil’s earnings.

Mr. Lane, who owns the local store, is nice, and he tells Andy and Phil about how maple syrup and maple sugar are made, something that everyone in town used to participate in so that it was like a community party. The boys think it sounds like a lot of fun, and while they are talking about the old sugarhouse, Mr. Lane mentions that, once, some thieves joined in when they were making making syrup. Nobody knew they were thieves at first; they were just a couple of strangers who came along with everyone else and started helping out. Later, there were some robberies in the area, and the thieves were found hiding in a cave near the sugarhouse. Mr. Lane says that he and his friends used to play in that cave when they were young, and Andy and Phil decide that they want to find it.

Mystery in the Old Cave bones

The boys take some tools with them while they’re looking for the cave, in case the entrance has been covered over, which turns out to be the case. Once they dig through the entrance, the rest of the cave appears intact. They find some old bones inside that probably belonged to a bear. They can’t look around much more because the cave is too dark, so they decide that they’ll return later with some lanterns. Mr. Lane tells the boys that there still might be stolen loot around because they never did find everything that the thieves took, including a pearl necklace that belonged to Andy’s grandmother, who was living there back then. Could these things be what the mysterious stranger is looking for?

Mystery in the Old Cave stove in store

During the course of the book, Mr. Lane begins to notice that Phil’s cousin isn’t giving him enough food. Cousin John denies Phil food when he refuses to turn over the extra money that he’s been earning to him. Mr. Lane gives Phil food from the store to eat. While Phil is at the store, he overhears the stranger, who calls himself Joe Williams, talking to Mr. Lane. Joe Williams admits that he’s looking for treasure in the area. Mr. Lane says that he doesn’t have high hopes that Joe Williams will find anything around the cave because the whole area was searched thoroughly years ago.

Phil tells Mr. Lane that he can’t stand living with his cousin anymore and wants to run away. Mr. Lane tries to persuade him not to go, saying that he can deal with Phil’s cousin, but Phil has had enough and worries that his cousin will make life hard for anyone who tries to help him. When Phil hides out in the old sugarhouse, he meets up with Joe Williams, who explains to him more about how he knows about the treasure that may be hidden in or around the cave. He’s about ready to give up the search, but Phil finds something that everyone else has overlooked.

In the end, Andy and Joan’s parents decide to take Phil in. Phil’s cousin agrees to sign over custody to the Drapers, provided that he gets to keep the money from Phil’s job that he took and the money that Phil’s mother left for Phil’s upkeep. I’m pretty sure that’s illegal and that the courts and social workers would have something to say about that if this story happened in real life in the 21st century, but in the story, Mr. Draper accepts the deal and basically uses the money that was meant for Phil to pay off his cousin to surrender custody of the boy. The story ends at Thanksgiving, with Phil sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with his new family, who will really love him and treat him much better than his cousin did.

Mystery in the Old Cave hiding

This is one of those older mystery stories that’s really more adventure than mystery. There’s really only one suspect for the odd person sneaking around, and his reasons for sneaking around turn out to be exactly what he said they were. There is no other hidden purpose or secret past behind that man other than what he said, and in the end, he just kind of leaves the story. The kids don’t have many clues to the location of the stolen items, and in the end, Phil finds them more by accident than anything else.

Sometimes, when I’m unsatisfied by the ending of a story, I like to make up an alternate one of my own. If I were writing this, I’d have had Phil’s nasty cousin be involved in the robbery and the hunt for the hidden loot. For example, maybe he was actually one of the original thieves and had a falling out with his partners, and he’s secretly searching for the rest of the loot they hid for years. Maybe he’s had to redouble his efforts recently because they’re getting out of prison soon, and he wants to get to the hidden loot before they do. Cousin John is money-hungry enough that it could be plausible, and that would allow the story to end with him being sent to prison, which seems fitting.

This isn’t important to the story at all, but I just wanted to say that the copy I have of this book is damaged in a very odd way. On some of the beginning pages, someone has cut out a few of the words, ransom-note style. I don’t know why that happened. There aren’t enough missing for a real ransom note, and some of the cut-out words are still stuck in the pages, but since this is a mystery book, I kind of like the image of someone using it to write some kind of mysterious secret message.

I haven’t been able to find an online copy of this book yet, but Internet Archive has others by the same author.

Posted on by TracyC

The Puppeteer’s Apprentice

The Puppeteer’s Apprentice by D. Anne Love, 2003.

Poor Mouse works as a scullery maid in a castle in Medieval England.  She has lived there all her life, since someone abandoned her at the castle as a baby.  She has no idea who her parents are, when her real birthday is, or exactly how old she is (the cook once said she was about eleven, but he wasn’t sure).  She doesn’t even have a real name; Mouse was simply the name given to her by the cook, who makes her work hard and beats her if she makes a mistake.  Mouse’s life is hard, but then one day, she makes a big mistake, and the cook gets in a rage and attacks her with a meat hook.  Mouse escapes from him and flees the castle.  She knows that she cannot go back, but she doesn’t know where to go. 

For the first time in her life, Mouse’s fate is in her own inexperienced hands.  For a time, she joins up with a group of travelers, who take her to the city of York.  However, none of them can adopt Mouse, and she must struggle to make a life for herself.  In York, Mouse sees a puppeteer performing, and she is inspired to learn to be a puppeteer herself.  Through a mixture of trickery and pleading, Mouse convinces the puppeteer to take her on as an apprentice. 

Although Mouse makes many mistakes at first, and the puppeteer gets angry and threatens to leave her behind, the two eventually learn to get along with each other.  Mouse gains skill at making and manipulating the puppets, and her confidence grows.  However, danger still lurks in the future, for the puppeteer also has a dark past and dark secrets which pursue the two of them in their travels.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

Stories with abused and neglected children are always sad. Mouse is failed by various adults who are mainly focused on their own lives and securing their own positions in life before she finally becomes independent. We don’t know why Mouse was abandoned as a baby, although it was probably because her parents were poor and maybe unmarried, which would have been a stigma at the time. We can be pretty sure that, whatever happened, Mouse’s parents’ position in life was too precarious to take care of her themselves. The castle cook she lives with is mainly worried about his own job and is more of an unwilling employer to Mouse than a parent. In fact, employment is more of a theme in Mouse’s precarious life than family. Even the puppeteer is more of an employer to Mouse than a parent. Mouse learns from the puppeteer, but it’s as an employee, and Mouse is well aware that she can be abandoned at any time if she fails to please her employer. In the end, Mouse gains an independence that pleases her, but I still found it a little sad because it seems like the one and only person who can’t abandon Mouse is Mouse herself and that there is little or no security in trusting or relying on others. The eventual goal turns out to be employing herself so she doesn’t haven’t to rely on someone who can dump her. I suppose that can be true in real life, too, but it’s one of hard, dark sides of life.

Although, the adult characters’ focus on securing their own lives and positions first is also a testament to the nature of the time when the story is set. Opportunities are limited by social level, and there are few sources of support for those who suffer unfortunate circumstances. Although it seems like the adults in the story are cruel and neglectful, there’s also a desperation to their own situations. The one person in the story who is willing and able to offer more generosity to Mouse than other characters is able to do so because of his privileged position in life. Even the puppeteer, while seeming more free than other characters, is living under danger and threat, and there is genuine risk to sharing in her life that Mouse doesn’t come to understand until later.

The puppeteer always dresses in loose-fitting clothes to cover up the fact that she is a woman.  Although there is no reason why women cannot be puppeteers, she finds it necessary to disguise herself because she is pursued by an enemy from years ago.  Once, her father, who was a master puppeteer, saved the life of a young Duke who was attacked by a man named Ordin.  Ordin was trying to steal some of the duke’s lands.  The old puppeteer and his daughter stood witness against him, and he was thrown into prison.  Later, when he got out of prison, he attacked the party on the road, killing the old puppeteer and his companions.  Only the daughter escaped alive, and she became a puppeteer to support herself.  Ordin escaped, and she was forced to disguise herself to protect herself.  She even refuses to tell Mouse or anyone else what her real name is through most of the book. 

However, Ordin recognizes her one day while she and Mouse are giving a performance.  He and another highwayman follow them on the road and attack them.  The puppeteer kills the other highwayman but is gravely wounded herself.  Mouse fights back against Ordin, knocking him into the fire, and he burns to death.  They are not far from the duke’s castle, so the puppeteer sends Mouse there to get help.  Mouse tells the duke what happened to the puppeteer, and he has her brought to his castle.  The puppeteer, realizing that she will not recover from her wounds, finally tells Mouse her story and offers her name if Mouse wants it for herself.  The duke offers to let Mouse stay at his castle.  Mouse stays the winter, but in the spring, she decides to leave.  She has come to love life on the road, and she promised the puppeteer that she would take care of the puppets.  Mouse decides to take the puppeteer’s name, Sabine, as her own and sets off on a journey to find a place to perform her new puppet play, one telling the puppeteer’s story.

Posted on by TracyC · 5 Comments

The Boxcar Children

The Boxcar Children

BoxcarChildren#1 The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner, 1924, 1942.

“One warm night, four children stood in front of a bakery.  No one knew them.  No one knew where they had come from.”

These are the words that begin not only this story but a series that has been loved by generations and continued well beyond the death of the original author.

The four Alden children are on the run following the deaths of their parents.  Their nearest remaining relative is a grandfather they have never met, and although he should have custody of the children now, none of the children want to go live with him.  All that they know about him is that he is apparently a mean old man who opposed their parents’ marriage.  Henry, the eldest at fourteen, and Jessie, who is twelve, have taken charge of the two younger children, ten-year-old Violet and seven-year-old Benny.  They have a little money, and they’re now traveling on foot in search of a new home.

The first place they stop is a bakery in a nearby town where no one knows who they are.  They don’t have much money, but they know they are going to need supplies for their journey.  The stingy baker and his wife agree to give the children some food and a place to sleep for the night in exchange for some help in their shop.  The children are willing to work and accept the offer.  However, Henry and Jessie overhear the couple talking about them.  They like having the children to help in the shop, but Benny is too young to be of much help.  They are considering taking Benny to an orphanage and keeping the others.  Not wanting to be separated, Henry and Jessie wake Violet and pick up Benny, moving on.  Now, they have a second set of people they’re avoiding, besides their grandfather.

Seeking a place where they can stay while not being noticed by people around them, the children eventually find an old, abandoned boxcar on a disused piece of train track on the edge of some woods.  They take shelter there from the rain and decide that they can turn it into their new home.  There are blackberries growing nearby that they can eat and a stream where they can keep milk cold.  Henry finds odd jobs in a nearby town to earn more money, and the others discover an old dump where they retrieve some old, cracked dishes and other useful items.

It seems like an idyllic life at first.  The children are free of adult control, although they do have to work to create a household for themselves and find food.  They adopt a stray dog they call Watch (he’s their new watchdog), and Henry makes friends who appreciate what a hard worker he is.  However, some of these new friends start to wonder about Henry, where he comes from, and where his parents are.

The children soon realize that someone is spying on them.  Is it someone from the town?  Could the baker and his wife still be looking for them?  Or is it someone sent by their grandfather?  When Violet is suddenly taken ill, the others realize that they need help and someone to trust.

Getting help for Violet does mean that the children’s secret is revealed to everyone, although they learn some important things in the process.  They discover who was spying on them and why and also discover that their grandfather is a nicer person than they thought and truly cares for them.

Although this series is very popular, most people don’t know that the story they read as children was actually a shortened version of the original story that was written in 1924.

The newer, popular version of the book is available online through Internet Archive.  The older version is now public domain and available online through Project Gutenberg.

Comparisons to the Older Version and My Reaction

Along with shortening and simplifying the story from original the 1924 version, the newer version from 1942 changed some of the characters’ names (the children had the same first names, but their family name was originally Cordyce, not Alden) and removed some parts that might be objectionable for young children.

Although the original story doesn’t completely clear up some questions that were left unresolved in the current version, like what the children’s parents were like, precisely how they died, and why they quarreled with the children’s grandfather in the first place, it did supply a few more details in the first chapter.  The original story begins when the children move to a new town with their father.  No one knew exactly where they came from, and the children pointedly refuse to say.  However, they do tell their neighbor, a baker, that their mother is already dead.  Their father is drunk, and the baker thinks that he looks like he’s in such bad condition that he isn’t likely to last much longer.  That turns out to be true when he dies (apparently from alcohol-related causes) soon after.  When they question the children about whether or not they have other relatives, young Benny blurts out that they have a grandfather before the others silence him.  The adults press the children for answers, and they reluctantly admit that there is a grandfather, but they say that he did not like their mother and would treat them cruelly if they were sent to him (or so, apparently, their parents had led them to believe).  The only one of the children who has even seen the grandfather is Jessie (actually called Jess in this version of the story), and it was only from a distance because her father happened to see him passing by and pointed him out.  Later, the children hear the baker and his wife talking, saying that they have no choice but to try to find the grandfather, and the children decide to run away to avoid going to live with him.  The questions of how their mother died and why the grandfather didn’t like her in the first place are never answered.

James Cordyce (the children’s grandfather in the original book, their grandmother is also apparently dead) is a wealthy man who owns steel mills, and he is impressed by the children’s ingenuity and resourcefulness at managing their own affairs while living on their own.  He tells Henry that he wants him to take over the steel mills one day, and the book says that Henry does so when he grows up and does a wonderful job of managing them.  Mr. Cordyce tells the other children that he wants them all to go to college, and then they can do whatever they like when they grow up, which the book says also happens.

Although the books never actually say so, my theory is that Mr. Cordyce/Alden was a hard-headed businessman, particularly when he was younger, driven to succeed and not emotionally demonstrative, and that this attitude caused a rift between him and his son, who may not have shared his father’s business skills and interests.  The grandfather may have wanted his son to follow in his footsteps when the son had other ambitions.  The son may have seen his father as a cold and ruthless businessman and conveyed that impression to his own children after marrying a woman his father disapproved of (Because her family was poor? Because they were unambitious?  Because she had some objectionable personal habit?  There’s no telling), but because he may not have told the children the whole reason why he thought that the grandfather was cruel, the children imagined that he was worse than he really was.

We don’t know what the children’s father did for a living after his feud with his father or exactly where they lived (perhaps in Greenfield or close by so that Jessie was able to catch sight of her grandfather one day).  Why the father took to drinking is also never explained, but I think it may be implied that he did so out of grief for his dead wife.  I think that Henry and Jessie probably had to manage the household for their parents following their mother’s death (and maybe before that if she suffered from ill health), which is part of the reason why the children are so self-sufficient and seem more tied to each other than to any adult.  In any case, the original book says that Mr. Cordyce is interested when the doctor who befriends the children says that Henry and Jessie have business management skills, so I think it sounds like he was thrilled to find out that he might have more in common with his grandchildren than he did with his son and hopeful that Henry would make a better successor in the family business.  But, that’s just the way I read it.

One other point that the original book covered was Watch’s origins.  The later version just has Watch as a stray who the children adopt, but the original story explained that he had just been purchased from a kennel by a wealthy woman when he was lost.  The kennel owner tries to reclaim the dog (kennel name Rough No. 3) on behalf of the woman, but the grandfather offers to buy the dog for much more than the original price.  The kennel owner says that it’s up to the woman who bought him, and they invite the woman to the house.  After hearing how attached the children have become to Watch, the woman allows them to keep him.

Posted on by TracyC

Toby Tyler

TobyTylerToby Tyler; Or, Ten Weeks with a Circus by James Otis, 1881.

Toby Tyler is an orphan who lives with a church deacon he calls “Uncle Daniel.” Uncle Daniel isn’t really his uncle, but he raised Toby after he was abandoned as a baby. Toby doesn’t know anything about his parents. Uncle Daniel is stern with him and says that Toby eats more than he earns, making it a hardship to care for him. Toby is cared for, but life with Uncle Daniel isn’t exactly happy.

Toby has a fascination for the circus, although Uncle Daniel says that the show isn’t any good, and it’s all a waste of time and money. The circus is certainly cheap, as Toby can see from the first. When he tries to buy some peanuts, he only gets six for the penny he gives, and all or most seem to be bad. The lemonade is basically water with lemon peel in it. But, to Toby’s surprise, the man who sells the snacks at the circus, Mr. Lord, offers him a job. He says that people who work for the circus get to see the show as often as they like, and he could use a boy to help him as an assistant.

TobyTylerPicToby think that it sounds like an exciting offer, and Mr. Lord persuades Toby that the best way would be for him to sneak away at night because his Uncle Daniel might disapprove and stop him from taking the job. Not taking that as a warning, Toby agrees. Toby feels a little guilty about running away and surprisingly homesick, but he decides to stand by the agreement he made with Mr. Lord and see what possibilities life with the circus might have for him.

Life with the circus turns out to be very different from what Toby is used to and what he expects. It’s noisy and dirty, and no one seems to particularly care about Toby or his welfare. Mr. Lord also turns out to be even sterner than Uncle Daniel, not even telling Toby what he expects him to do, just expecting him to do it. Toby works hard, and Mr. Lord acknowledges that he’s better than the other boys who have helped him, but he’s still a temperamental man and hard to please. Like Uncle Daniel, he fusses about how much Toby eats. Toby also has to sell snacks inside the big top under the watchful eyes of Mr. Jacobs, who threatens him with violence if he doesn’t make sales or if people try to cheat him.

However, Toby does succeed in making a few friends in the circus. The first friend he makes is a monkey that he calls Mr. Stubbs. Mr. Treat, who plays the part of the Living Skeleton in the circus sideshow, and his wife, who is the Fat Lady, have seen Mr. Lord mistreating other boys, and they intervene to make sure that Toby is all right, giving him food when Mr. Lord doesn’t. Unlike everyone else Toby has known, Mrs. Treat lets him eat as much as he wants without worrying, saying that some people just need more food than others. Like her husband, Toby seems to have the ability to eat a lot while still being small and skinny.  Mrs. Treat herself maintains an enormous size while hardly eating anything. She says that’s just how some people are.

When Mr. Castle teaches Toby to do trick riding, his status goes up in the circus, and he is no longer under Mr. Lord’s thumb. As far as the Treats are concerned, Toby could stay with them forever. However, life in the circus isn’t what Toby had once thought it was, and Toby can’t get rid of the thought that he’s made a terrible mistake by running away from Uncle Daniel. He wants to go home and make things right with him.

In the Disney movie, Toby stays with the circus, doing well with his trick riding act and having happy adventures with his monkey friend. Unfortunately, in the book, Mr. Stubbs is accidentally shot by a hunter and dies. The book was meant to teach moral lessons about responsibility, whereas the movie was just about fun and adventure.

In the end of the movie, Toby stays with the circus even while being reunited with the people who raised him and missed him when he ran away, giving an all-around happy ending. In the book, Toby feels terrible about the death of Mr. Stubbs (although it wasn’t really his fault), and the hunter who shot him is very sorry because he hadn’t realized that he had shot someone’s pet. To make up for it, he helps Toby to get back to Uncle Daniel. At first, Toby is unsure that Uncle Daniel will want him back, but he misses his old home so much that he says he doesn’t care if Uncle Daniel whips him for running away. However, Uncle Daniel has also missed Toby since he disappeared. As stern and harsh as he could be before, Uncle Daniel genuinely cares about Toby and welcomes him back with open arms.  The ending implies that Toby’s future with Uncle Daniel will be happier than the past because they have much greater appreciation for each other now.

The book is now in the public domain and is available on Project Gutenberg.

Posted on by TracyC

Steal Away

StealAwaySteal Away by Jennifer Armstrong, 1992.

Most of this story is framed as a flashback, actually two of them.  In the beginning, during the late 1800s, a girl named Mary is taken by her grandmother, Susannah, to visit an old friend of hers who is dying.  The friend, Bethlehem, is a black woman who is a teacher in Canada and has a student living with her, a young black girl named Free, who is about the same age as Mary.  At first, Mary doesn’t completely understand who Bethlehem is and why they are there to see her, and Free is somewhat aloof and suspicious of these white people, but together, Bethlehem and Susannah explain to both the girls about their unusual friendship and a shared history that changed both of their lives forever.  As they explain, Mary writes down their story.

Years ago, before the American Civil War, Susannah was a young teenage orphan.  She traveled from her home in Vermont to the home of her aunt and uncle in Virginia, her new guardians.  Homesick, missing not only her deceased parents but the friends she left behind, especially a boy who is her best friend (and who eventually becomes her husband, Mary’s grandfather), Susannah finds life in Virginia strange and unpleasant.  Her aunt and uncle own slaves, which is something that makes Susannah uneasy.  She was raised not to believe in slavery, but her aunt and uncle give her a slave of her own to take care of her, a girl about her age named Bethlehem.  Susannah is extremely uncomfortable with the situation, not really being the kind of person to get others to do things for her or order anyone around, and Bethlehem isn’t happy about being saddled with this sad, somewhat weak and clueless, white girl.

Bethlehem already has serious problems.  Susannah’s older, male cousin has taken a liking to Bethlehem and pursues her, trying to force his attentions on her.  Bethlehem resists but knows that one day she might not be able to stop him because she’s in his family’s power.  They own her and have authority over her.  Susannah is unaware of this situation at first, being a rather naive girl.  However, Susannah’s unhappiness at her new home increases, and more and more, she longs to return to her real home in Vermont, and her desire to escape also becomes Bethlehem’s ticket to freedom.

Both of the girls long for freedom, although each craves a different kind of freedom and has in mind a different kind of life they long to live elsewhere.  Together, they team up to run away in disguise as boys, although Bethlehem does not trust Susannah at first because she resents white people and the slavery that has been forced on her for her entire life. However, with their common interest in escape, they learn to rely on each other.  They come to trust and understand one another much better during the course of their journey.  It is an eye-opening and life-changing experience for both of them.  Then, when it comes time for them to say goodbye and go their separate ways, it is one of the hardest things that either of them have had to do.

It is a story about lives with separate directions but which crossed in unexpected ways to the benefit of both of them.  Because Susannah and Bethlehem have different destinies and different things that they want in life, they cannot live their lives together and do not see each other again for many years after their adventures, but because of their shared experiences, they still share a bond that lasts across time.

After Bethlehem’s death, Mary becomes concerned about the young student of Bethlehem’s, Free, who was living with her as a part of her family, but Free doesn’t want their help.  Susannah tells Mary that they have to let her live her life and establish her own independence in the way she wants, just as Susannah had to let Bethlehem go her own way years before as a strong, independent young woman who only wanted the freedom to choose her own course in life.

In the end, Mary, as an adult looking back on the one and only time she met her grandmother’s old friend, just before her death, realizes that she has also learned much from the experience, not just about her grandmother’s history, but about herself, other people, racial differences and attitudes, and some of the realities of the world, absorbing vicariously some of the lessons her grandmother learned years ago through her story and Bethlehem’s.

This isn’t really a happy story.  The ending kind of leaves readers with an unsettled feeling because there are many things left unanswered and unresolved.  The book does explain a little about what happens to the characters at the end, but for the most part, they all kind of go their separate ways.  Although they’ve had an effect on each other, nothing is clear-cut, and they share moments together more than lives.  I have to admit that I felt like some of the story dragged in places and others were downright depressing, making this a difficult book to get through.  However, it is interesting for showing a part of history, a life-changing event from different points of view, and some poignant thoughts about caring but letting go.

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

Posted on by TracyC

The Cuckoo Clock

CuckooClockStolz

The Cuckoo Clock by Mary Stolz, 1987.

Erich was a foundling, taken in by the Goddhart family as a baby after he was found on their doorstep. Frau Goddhart has a reputation for kindness, but sadly, that reputation is really all she has. She is outwardly kind, participating in local charities, only to enhance her reputation. At home, she is selfish and cruel, ruling the house with an iron fist and having tantrums when things don’t go her way. She sees Erich as an unwanted responsibility, only grudgingly raising him along with her own children because if she refused, it would ruin her reputation. Her husband is kind to Erich, but Frau Goddhart treats him more like a servant.

Erich only comes to know real love when he becomes Ula’s assistant. Ula is the town clockmaker, a master in his craft. Ula teaches Erich his craft and how to play the violin.

 

When Ula dies, leaving Erich his carving tools and his violin, the selfish Frau Goddhart tries to take them away, thinking that such things are too good for a mere foundling, a charity case. Before she can get these precious things, Erich runs away to seek his fortune elsewhere, but he leaves behind something that convinces the town that, although he may be the ungrateful wretch that Frau Goddhart says that he is, he has a talent that will lead him on to greater things.

 

One of the fascinating things about this book is the pictures, which are charming pencil drawings in a realistic style.  There is also a note in the back about the unusual typeface of the book.

CuckooClockStolzType