As eldest daughter, she has been responsible for caring for the family and their home since their mother died. In Jennifer Donnelly’s YA novel A Northern Light, Mattie Gokey lives on a farm with her father and three sisters in the Adirondack mountains just after the turn of the century. Only in this case, it feels even more magical because the person with whom you have so much in common is actually a figment of some author’s imagination and you wonder, “How on Earth did she know? How did she get what is going on in my head right at this moment?” It’s like meeting someone at a party who has a completely different background than you but with whom you instantly connect and see eye-to-eye. One reason I love reading historical fiction books is that, every once in a while, you get the magical feeling of a character stepping out of her time, reaching out across the pages to whisper her truths in your ear, and the amazing thing is that the two of you could be sisters.
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