An Irish girl in the Civil War

My Last Skirt: The Story of Jennie Hodgers, Union Soldier by Lynda Durrant is a great book. It was so interesting for me to learn about what an Irish girl faced in the mid-1800s in her native land. And then, after tragedy strikes their family, she and her brother travel to America to find the “gold just lying in the streets.” Of course, it wasn’t that easy to make their way in a new country.

Jennie's adventures as she disguises herself as a boy are funny and sad, all at the same time. She knows she can make more money if employers think she’s male, which was unfair but a reality then. What will her secret mean to her life long-term? I was very surprised to see how she ended up. A definite gem in the genre of historical fiction.

Magic, and more magic

I finished these two books this week and loved both of them, each one for very different reasons.

The Book Without Words: A Fable of Medieval Magic by Avi is a novel about survival and magic and evil and good, and a talking crow. I went looking in the stacks for a different Avi young adult novel, which wasn’t there, but I found this one and am so glad I did. Once I read the first page, I couldn’t put it down.

The other book I mowed through this week was 47 by Walter Mosley. This is the author’s first YA story and it is spectacular. It’s historical fiction that tells the tale of a young slave on a southern plantation in the 1800s, relayed in the first person. From the book:

The story you are about to read concerns certain events that occurred in the early days of my life. It all happened over a hundred and seventy years ago. For many of you it might sound like a tall tale because I am no older today than I was back in the year 1832. But this is no whopper I'm telling; it is a story about my boyhood as a slave and my fated encounter with the amazing Tall John from beyond Africa, who could read dreams, fly between galaxies, and make friends with any animal no matter how wild.

I loved Mosley's story so much, I was sorry when I’d finished so quickly (even though I raced to the end because I couldn’t stop myself – catch 22:).