num_pages: 389
description: Mattie Gokey has a word for everything. She collects words, stores them up as a way of fending off the hard truths of her life, the truths that she can't write down in stories.The fresh pain of her mother's death. The burden of raising her sisters while her father struggles over his brokeback farm. The mad welter of feelings Mattie has for handsome but dull Royal Loomis, who says he wants to marry her. And the secret dreams that keep her going--visions of finishing high school, going to college in New York City, becoming a writer.Yet when the drowned body of a young woman turns up at the hotel where Mattie works, all her words are useless. But in the dead woman's letters, Mattie again finds her voice, and a determination to live her own life.Set in 1906 against the backdrop of the murder that inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, this coming-of-age novel effortlessly weaves romance, history, and a murder mystery into something moving, and real, and wholly original.
language: English
title: A Northern Light
titlecomplete: A Northern Light
characters: Beth Gokey, Emily Wilcox, Tommy Hubbard, Royal Loomis, Grace Brown, Lou Gokey, Michael Gokey, Mattie Gokey, Weaver Smith, Abby Gokey
genres: Fiction, Historical, Young Adult Historical Fiction, Coming Of Age, Mystery, Teen, Young Adult, Romance, Historical Fiction, Audiobook
ratings_count: 43668
places: Adirondack Mountains, New York, New York (State)
awards: awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Borders Original Voices Award
category: YA or Independent Reader, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Los Angeles Times Book Prize
category: Young Adult Literature, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Michael L. Printz Award, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Charlotte Award, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Rhode Island Teen Book Award, awardedAt: 1230796800000
name: Lincoln Award, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Carnegie Medal, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Gateway Readers Award
publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers