Consider today’s post the caboose, pulling up the rear of our
summer train of themed blog posts about the one book that each
of us learned from this past year.
(Or in April’s case, the one book that changed her.)
Of course I’ve known from the get-go the book I’d be choosing,
and the twist on our theme it demanded - i.e. the book that struck
me like a bolt of lightning: My Own Lightning (Dutton, May,
2022), Lauren Wolk’s sequel to the Newbery Honor Winner
Wolf Hollow (Dutton, 2016).
I leave the compelling and surprising plotlines of both books to
future Readers.
Suffice it to say, when I left 12-year-old Annabelle McBride in
western Pennsylvania’s Wolf Hollow in 1946, her heart was heavy,
weighed down with matters of truth-telling and justice and
kindness, of personal responsibility “when doing right can go
very wrong.” She was telling her story first person, past tense,
years after the action that showed her she mattered. She grabbed
my heart and refused to let go.
So imagine my delight when she beckoned me again, this time at
the start of summer of that very same year. Except now her spirit
lay low. Might-have-beens and if-onlys distracted her, she shared.
What-ifs consumed her. And just like that, in the blink of an eye,
her world once more “tipped on its axis”! The lightning that struck
her that stormy June day heightened her sensibilities, especially to
emotions, and changed her outright. Or rather, eventually and for
the better, outright and inward. Empathy has a way of setting
straight misunderstandings, teaching us how to forgive, both
others and ourselves. The story’s illumination of such Truths
caused me to “fizzle and crackle” right along with Annabelle,
despite the difference in our ages, as if we were both still full
of lightning.
My own lightning, indeed.
Katherine Paterson superbly described the kind of magic Lauren
Wolk conjures up.
“What happens is a reciprocal gift between writer and reader:
one heart in hiding reaching out to another.”
Each of Lauren Wolk’s “Book Daughters” as she calls them in this
interview with Horn Book’s Roger Sutton, has gifted me
accordingly.
Crow in Beyond the Bright Sea, a story set on the Elizabeth Islands
off the coast of Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1925.
Ellie in Echo Mountain, a story set in
Maine in 1934.
A fifth grader recently queried Ms. Wolk if she might write a story
featuring all three of her young female characters, resurrecting a
story idea she’d put aside.
We Readers can only heartfully hope.
Esther Hershenhorn
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