Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary D. Schmidt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Published two years before Gary D. Schmidt acclaimed The Wednesday Wars, Lizzie Bright is a historical novel I found at first reminiscent of Johnny Tremain. However, while both are New England Americana, the similarity stops there; this book is not patriotic or set around any well-known historical events. Instead it is steeped in Maine bay-culture where fishing, lobster-catching and oyster-hunting are the daily bread of life, along with strict religionism that Turner’s family, led by his preacher father, was hired from Boston to implement. Though there is not slavery in the North, a severe stigma follows “negroes,” who are viewed as the cast-away ne’er-do-well inhabitants of Malaga Island.
It took me a chapter or two to get a taste for what I was reading, with less striking characters than Wednesday Wars or Okay For Now, but it grew on me and I soon realized that I was reading something of high quality. Schmidt’s prose doesn’t shine – the functionality of it is his style – but his story-crafting is where the pearls are buried. As significant as the individual characters is that of “The Town,” really led by the masters of commerce and the old-boy religionists who inform Preacher Buckminster what he should preach and think and endorse. While I won’t here recite any of the plot, I will point out that this book is very much about the life cycle (including Darwin’s work) of both people and towns, but that while it gives a fair reckoning of “survival of the fittest,” it also seasons it with humanity. I was shocked when I realized in the second half of the book that no punches are pulled here; terrible things happen without apology. And yet, despite it all, it ends with a distinct rising note that seems to say, “Life goes on, and even with its scars and wounds, it might just be richer than before.” This book has the rare distinction of inculcating alongside the character development of the protagonist, Turner, the development of the reader. I can’t help but feel that my awareness and perspective on life is as impacted as Turner’s by his having “touched a whale” and throughout everything else that symbolic moment shone as a beacon.
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