OK OKby HM Bouwman
Narrated by 13-year-old Peggy Mott, a part of a loving, close-knit farming group, the brand new novel by H.M. with out indoor plumbing—which pulls us simply into the frugal however comfy world of West Department, Iowa, in 1941.
However Peggy’s world is about to vary.
In the identical week {that a} dreamy 16-year-old German boy named Gunther arrives at Scattergood (an area Quaker faculty turned dormitory for refugees fleeing the Nazis), she learns that her 14-year-old greatest good friend and cousin Delia was identified with leukemia. Lengthy story brief, Peggy’s curiosity in Gunther leads her to a different man within the hostel, a Dutch professor whose household, like Gunther’s, has “disappeared”. (“Even I knew what disappeared meant,” notes Peggy ruefully. “Hitler. The Warfare’).
Simply as “The Professor” (with a capital P) refuses to surrender on the seek for his spouse and youngsters, Peggy decides she’s going to discover a technique to save Delia, who’s again within the hospital. By no means thoughts that when she units out to discover a remedy for her good friend’s sickness, she rapidly discovers that there’s none.
Whereas Peggy visits the native library and the close by faculty city of Iowa Metropolis for respite after which briefly turns to prayer, life goes on in West Department. Social dynamics are altering and teenage attachments are being rejected. Individuals struggle as pumpkins develop on thick inexperienced vines.
In the meantime, Delia grows sicker as Peggy and the professor play chess and unpack their ache.
This intermingling of tragic storylines could sound a bit heavy for center grade readers, however in truth these intersections are the e book’s best energy.
At first look, Scattergood is each a novel about most cancers and a narrative concerning the Holocaust, however reasonably than weighing one another down, these threads create a sort of shared logic—for whereas most cancers and the Holocaust sign impending devastation, Peggy and the Professor proceed to look, if not for a contented ending, for that means and luxury of their ache. There’s a symmetry to this.
As Peggy exhausts the utility of science and prayer, she struggles to assist her sick good friend.
She writes Delia a observe day by day, which retains her linked and forces her to see her personal world extra clearly: “Birds are probably the most lovely animals, do not you suppose, Dee? (Aside from the chickens.) … Come residence quickly, sturdy and wholesome, so you’ll be able to watch them with me within the subject behind your home.
However the letters cannot cease the most cancers, so when Delia leaves the hospital, she asks Peggy for a distinct sort of assist: “Discover one thing that may make me really feel higher. Extra – extra prepared.”
That is the place “Scattergood” actually shines, as a result of on some degree it investigates extra than simply whether or not we are able to expertise nice loss but in addition how.
When Peggy turns to the professor for steering, he affords no passable solutions, solely Hasidic tales that he himself doesn’t appear to consider. Then, in a sudden twist, Peggy’s first kiss has her operating again to him simply as he is obtained horrible information from residence. Consumed with grief, he fails her, and the result’s a kind of unleashing as Peggy spins and acts, setting off a series of surprising and catastrophic occasions.
To be trustworthy, I used to be unprepared for this plot twist – blindsided. However then I ended to suppose: is not that precisely what occurs in moments of tragedy? We falter in methods we could not have predicted, and feelings spiral uncontrolled.
What is the suitable response to a baby’s ache at a time when he’s rising into himself, looking for each care and independence? “I used to be questioning,” Peggy tells us, “if there was any consolation that would final and that might be adequate and work completely with out ruining every thing round it.”
However this isn’t the tip of the e book! As all of us should do after catastrophe, Peggy wakes up the subsequent day, picks up the threads of her story, and carries on. There’s nonetheless tragedy to be confronted, however now she faces it with just a little extra knowledge. The truth that she will’t repair every thing doesn’t suggest she will’t repair something. Because the professor defined it, “Free will versus windfall. The age-old paradox…one thing that appears like a contradiction however may not be.”
On this spirit of paradox, the tip of “Scattergood” feels extra like a starting. Peggy is simply starting to know herself, her energy, her accountability to others, and the journey forward. The novel ends not with a prayer however with “an image of a prayer, the sort of prayer you would possibly make for those who hoped in opposition to your higher judgment that somebody was listening.”
Scattergood is a courageous, lovely e book, sensible sufficient to succeed in for one thing past certainty.
OK OK | By HM Bouwman | (Ages 10 and up) | Neil Porter/Vacation Home | 320 pages | $18.99
