A Northern Light
First edition
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| Author | Jennifer Donnelly |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Young adult historical novel, mystery |
| Publisher | Harcourt Children's Books |
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Publication date
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April 1, 2003 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback), Audiobook |
| Pages | 389 pp (first edition) includes bibliography |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 49796591 |
| LC Class | PZ7.D7194 No 2003 |
A Northern Light, or A Gathering Light in the U.K., is an American historical novel for young adults, written by Jennifer Donnelly and published by Harcourt in 2003. The story is known as Realistic Fiction because of the untrue life story of Mattie Gokey, the real death of Grace Brown, and the events that could take place in the 1900s. Set in northern Herkimer County, New York in 1906, it is based on the Grace Brown murder case —the basis also for An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (1925). It features a girl -the narrator-, who gets caught up in the events.
In the U.K., Bloomsbury published an edition within the calendar year, entitled A Gathering Light, and Donnelly won the 2003 Carnegie Medal, recognizing the year's outstanding book by a British author for children or young adults. For the 70th anniversary of the Medal a few years later it was named one of the top ten winning works, selected by a panel to compose the ballot for a public election of the all-time favourite.
Jennifer Donnelly intertwines this real-life murder of Grace Brown with fictional Mattie Gokey's story. The readers get a taste of how bitter and sweet ordinary life is in the 1900s mixed with a non-fiction murder mystery.
The novel centers on a feisty and smart sixteen-year-old narrator Mathilda "Mattie" Gokey with strong morals. The novel takes place in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York (the "North Woods") during 1906. Mattie dreams of going to Barnard College in New York City. While smart enough to go, her father does not allow her: there is no one to work on the farm except Mattie and her three younger sisters, Abby, Lou, and Beth. Her mother died and her brother Lawton left home because of a fight with their father.
Mattie's is passionate about reading and writing; she looks up a new word in her dictionary so that she can educate herself. Her best friend, Weaver Smith, is also intelligent and has large aspirations. Weaver is African-American and is as strong in math as Mattie is in literature. Weaver shows Mattie's writings to their teacher, Miss Wilcox, who sends an application for Mattie to Barnard College . Mattie gets "full scholarship" to Barnard but she knows she can't afford to buy the books and a train ticket, or to leave her family's farm.
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