The Letter Writer (Great Episodes)
Grade 6–9—When 11-year-old Harriet becomes the letter writer for Mother Whitehead, her blind stepmother, she also begins writing to her Uncle Andrew, an estranged "black sheep" of the family living in England, whose unconventional views on God, slavery, and family she discovers she shares. And when the slave preacher Nat Turner makes her believe "that God is forgiving and good" rather than "angry and ready to punish and send us to hell forever," she copies a map of Southampton County, VA, for him so that he can preach at neighboring plantations. The full weight of this last choice becomes clear on August 22, 1831. Rinaldi spares no one the brutal trauma of Nat Turner's slave rebellion; though she escapes, Harriet envisions her family members' graphic deaths. Neither does the author gloss over the fundamental barbarism of slavery, of murder in the name of maintaining "control" of one's "property," which lead to Turner's and his followers' wrath. Significantly, in the death of Margaret Whitehead, Rinaldi borrows from William Styron's controversialThe Confessions of Nat Turner(Random, 1968), unnecessarily sexualizing the motive for the one murder Turner committed himself. Ultimately, however, Rinaldi depicts a world full of historical detail, one without clear answers, and leaves her readers to consider the controversial Turner and the impact of murder.—Bethany Isaacson, Wheaton Regional Library, Silver Spring, MDCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an alternateHardcoveredition.