Gather

 Gather

By Kenneth M. Cadow

This book made quite a splash in Vermont, as its author is a genuine high school principal in Bradford, VT.
It also got national attention and was short-listed for the National Book Award. I picked it up in part because of this pedigree, but also because Erin thought it might make for a good all-middle-school read next year.

It is the story of a high-school student named Ian, who lives in a rural Vermont town. Our state is often thought of as affluent, and, for many, that's true; it isn't for Ian. He grows up in a house that has a long history in his family. He once shared it with his grandparents, his dad, and his mom. Then his grandfather died, and his father left. So did his grandmother. And his mom isn't really up to being a mom. 

The story begins when his mom returns home from the hospital after an accidental overdose. We don't really know what she is on, but Ian finds a needle, so we can assume its opiates. His mom's problem began like many people's: with a prescription. She'd hurt herself at work, and received pills to help with back pain. After that, it was a downward spiral.

The OD, though, seems like the rock-bottom moment his mom needed. She swears off drugs and finds a job at a local diner. Ian, meanwhile, is able to find some odd jobs, and starts seeing a new-to-town girl, Sylvia, whose wealthy home-life is nothing like his own. But then his mom discovers that they owe $11,000 in back taxes -- an astronomical sum to them -- and things start to unravel. She ODs again -- and this time doesn't make it. Faced with the abyss, Ian finds he can only truly count on one thing: his dog, Gather, an enormous Irish Wolf Hound. So when he finds that he won't be able to keep him at his new home with his estranged dad, he escapes to the woods. He holes up until he is assured he'll be able to return to his true home.

It was interesting reading this book as a teacher. One of themes of the book is the way(s) in which school does and doesn't meet Ian's needs. He is highly dependent upon school for his physical safety. It's where he goes for warmth and for food. He also finds a degree of emotional support through The Sharpe, a history teacher who shows up for him no matter what. But he seems oblivious to this, focusing instead on how his set of skills isn't valued and recognized. Throughout his neighborhood, Ian is highly regarded as someone who can fix anything. His adult neighbors come to him to take care of things; he is even hired to serve as something of a caretaker for an elderly neighbor. It raises the question: What is school for? And that's just one that I think could be interesting to mine with students. Is there such a thing as a "real" Vermonter? Should land ever be posted? Who is responsible for the opioid crisis? What role do pets play in our lives?

A great read. 

Winter People

 Winter People

By Jennifer McMahon

Whew! This was a scary one! I don't read a lot of ghost stories, but I picked this one up while gathering

Kessler at a neighbor's house; she casually asked me if I wanted a book I could read in two days. Of course! It took me a bit longer than that, but only because school is still in session.

The draw for the neighbor, and me, was the fact that the story takes place in Vermont. My second in a row! The narrative switches back and forth between the present day and 1908, the year of some strange happenings in the small town of West Hall, Vermont. The latter-day protagonist is Sara Shea, whose diaries make up the bulk of the older thread of the story. Her tale begins shortly after the death of her beloved daughter, Gertie, a child she had hoped would stay after a string of miscarriages and one infant death. It was not to be. Stricken with grief, Sara calls upon a spell given to her by her one-time "nanny" -- it's hard to find an apt title for her -- a mysterious woman with some vague ties to Native American ancestry. The spell allows a person to revive a dead person at a portal that happens to be on Sara's property. Gertie "lives" again.

As that story unfolds, we learn of a modern-day disappearance. Alice, a mother of two who now inhabits Sara's old house, has suddenly gone missing. It's an all-too-familiar occurrence in West Hall, that some blame on supernatural forces that seem to reside in the Devil's Hand, the rock formation behind Sara's old house where the portal resides. Alice's two daughters' search for their mother leads them to a secret hideaway beneath their mother's bed, which contains a gun and two driver's licenses. Thinking the people in the ID might hold a clue to Alice's whereabouts, they head to Connecticut. There, they encounter more than they bargained for. Spoiler alert: The trail of the licenses leads the elder daughter, Ruthie, to her long-lost aunt; it turns out Alice isn't her real mother.

Meanwhile, an artist named Katherine is trying to unravel another mystery. Her husband, also stricken with grief after the death of a child, has died on his way home from West Hall. Katherine has no idea why he would be there, and moves to the town to try to piece together some kind of explanation for the unraveling of her life. 

The threads of the story come together one snowy night, when the long-lost -- and mighty unstable -- aunt burst in on Alice's kids and, at gunpoint, demands to know everything they can tell her about their mother. Katherine, too, makes an appearance, and she learns that her husband had come to West Hall after discovering Sara's recipe for making the dead walk again. 

And so it is that the five of them trudge in the middle of the night to the Devil's Hand, and squeeze into a cave that leads to a well-appointed cave. Someone -- something? -- is living there. Gertie, we learn, is alive. Or at least as alive as one can be after dying. She is holding Alice, who, it turns out, was something like her caretaker for many years, but apparently hadn't been as attentive as Gertie had wanted. All but the deranged aunt escape -- but not before Katherine executes the spell. Will another "sleeper" join Gertie?

The book certainly was a page Turner. 

The Fraud

 The Fraud

By Zadie Smith

I've known about Zadie Smith for some time, but I don't know as I've ever read one of her books. So when
I saw this new one on the shelves of the Sherburne Library, I thought I'd give it a shot.

The book is set in 19th century England. One of its focal points is the trial of a man, long thought dead in a shipwreck, to be the heir to a fortune. Is he "Sir Roger" or just a regular working-class resident of the village in which Sir Roger lived?

But that's not the only possible fraud. We see the trial through the eyes of Eliza. After a disastrous marriage, she now lives with, and is dependent upon, her distant cousin, William, a once-distinguished author desperately trying to revive his reputation -- and sales. Privately, Eliza, who was once William's lover, can't stand his writing. In her mind, he, too, is a fraud. Then again, she, too, is living a lie. She props up William's ego, aware of her precarious position. And during her younger trysts, Eliza had fallen in love with William's wife, whose own heart we never truly learn about. Finally, there is Eliza's income. She has been a firm abolitionist for decades, yet is dependent upon a yearly stipend from her former husband's family that was built on the slave trade. When she learns she is eligible to double this income -- a sum that would finally grant her independence from William -- she declines it on these grounds. But she cannot relinquish the rest of the money.

Maybe, though, it is society at large that is the fraud. Eliza comes away from Sir Roger's trial with a sense that the English legal system is not designed to hand down justice so much as it is to preserve the social order. In other words, the question becomes: What is the true fraud of the title? 

I certainly became engrossed in the story, and very much appreciated the rapid-fire chapters, some of which lasted just a few pages. Things kept moving, even when time shifted backward. But the book did seem a bit bereft of plot. Three hundred pages in, and I was still wondering: when is something going to happen?