Bosse (Deep Dream of the Rain Forest, 1993, etc.) continues his series of vivid works of historical fiction in this story of two brothers traveling across Ming Dynasty China to pursue their destinies. Lao Chen is a young Confucian scholar headed for the ultimate glory of the palace examination and top-level civil service; Lao Hong, loyal and worldly younger brother, is determined to escort Chen to Beijing and the highest honors. Through his cunning, Hong acquires enough money to get the two brothers to Chengdu for the provincial examination, which Chen passes easily. From there they must travel the long and treacherous road to Beijing—over the Yellow River, through drought- plagued provinces—for the next stage of the test. In addition, each brother is carrying a secret missive—Chen's from his teacher for an ostracized inventor, and Hong's from one member of the subversive White Lotus society to another. The brothers are separated when their junk is captured by pirates, who discover Hong's letter and torture him to discover its meaning, but Hong escapes, finds Chen, and the brothers continue on their way. When Chen passes the municipal and then the palace examination, his future is secure, and Hong is finally free to seek his own fortune through a career in the military. Bosse renders a graphic picture of 16th-century China- -its violence, ceremony, scholarship, and strict class order—in this stimulating and timeless story. (Fiction. YA)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-374-32234-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A girl’s interest in family history overlaps a coming-of-age story about her vestigial understanding of her mother after death, and her own awareness of self and place in the world. Junior high-school student Carrie Schmidt identifies strongly with the missing girls of 1967’s headlines about runaways. Carrie’s mother is dead and she has just moved in with her grandmother, Mutti, who embarrasses her with her foreign accent and ways. Carrie’s ideal is her friend Mona’s mother, a “professional” who dresses properly, smells good, and knows how to set out a table; readers will grasp the mother’s superficiality, even though Carrie, at first, does not. Mutti has terror in her past, and tells Carrie stories of the Jews in WWII Vienna, and of subsequent events in nine concentration camps; these are mined under the premise that Carrie needs stories for “dream” material and her interest in so-called lucid dreaming, a diverting backdrop that deepens the story without overwhelming it. Mutti’s gripping, terrible tales and the return of an old friend who raised Carrie’s mother when she was sent to Scotland at age nine awaken in Carrie a connection to her current family, to her ancestry, and, ultimately, to a stronger sense of self. This uncommon novel from Metzger (Ellen’s Case, 1995, etc.) steps out of the genre of historical fiction to tell a story as significant to contemporary readers as to the inhabitants of the era it evokes. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-670-87777-8
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
This unusual historical romance deals with a compelling subject: the true story of the infamous Fox sisters, who inadvertently began the spiritualist movement in 1848. Despite her book’s length, Salerni easily holds reader interest as she describes, usually from Maggie’s point of view, the inner workings of the Fox sisters’ deception. As Maggie confessed in 1888, they produced loud rapping “spirit” sounds primarily through cracking their ankle and toe joints. The author focuses her story first on Maggie’s conflicted feelings about her fraud, then on her romance with the famous Arctic explorer Elisha Kane, while depicting societal norms of the time through the difficulties of their unequal relationship. Ironically, history remembers Maggie Fox, while Kane, highly celebrated in his day, has been forgotten. The research is excellent, and the author displays a facility for fluid prose even as she writes in a modified archaic style that lends credence to the first-person conceit of the novel. Although the book’s length may discourage some readers, those caught in the story will enjoy it. A promising debut. (Historical fiction. YA)
Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4022-3092-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2010
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