Review-The Hired Girl, by Laura Amy Schlitz

The Hired Girl
Laura Amy Schlitz
Candlewick Press
Publication month: September 2015
978-0-7636-7818-0
$17.99/$23.99 Canada
400 pages
Age 12+




                                                                  Review by Wisteria©

The heroine of this coming of age novel is a feisty, headstrong, inherently impulsive powerhouse-a memorable character destined to be a classic. The Hired Girl, set in the year 1911 on a Pennsylvania farm is historical fiction.  However, the author has a storyteller's magical gift to transport the readers  into the mind  of Joan Scraggs and her experiences through her daily diary. Joan, fourteen, lives with her three brothers and evil tempered father.  After her mom dies, Joan is forced to assume her mom's arduous chores, exhaustive and thankless. She seeks solace in her passion for reading. The few books she owns have been read again and again.  Her father is determined to end her educational goals and the close relationship she has with her favorite teacher. Joan is very quick witted and eager to learn. Yet, when her teacher tries to persuade her father that Joan should stay in school she is rebuked.  Later, her father spews words of vitreous hatred at his daughter. Sadly, it just confirms what she has felt all along.  Unloved and shackled to a hard life on the farm she makes plans to flee.  As hateful as her father is, she recalls her mom's love and support.  Fortunately, her mother left a rainy day treasure in the ruffles of her favorite doll. With her mother's gift and and timely luck Joan secures a job as the hired girl, with a Jewish family.  Although she leads her employers to believe she is eighteen, assumes the name Janet, she settles into this new life.  It is through her diary that the reader will come to empathize and love Janet (Joan).   Her struggles with her own faith, love, women's roles, Anti-semitism and the social class prejudice prevalent are believable. The author captures not only the flavor of this period in history, but she allows the reader to experience Joan's her inner most thoughts, as only a diary will allow.  Laura Amy Schlitz is a gifted storyteller, one of my favorite young adult/tween writers. This one is now on my list to be order for my school's media center. The Hired Girl, with multiple themes and character study possibilities, is the perfect novel for classroom libraries, literature study and read aloud.  Yet it will stand out as a well loved free choice read for young and adult readers. Highly recommended. ~Wisteria Leigh

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Disclosure: An uncorrected proof was sent to me with a request for an unbiased review.  This review is my honest opinion.

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Review-The German Woman

THE GERMAN WOMAN
Paul Griner,

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
2009, $25.00, hc, 320pp.
9780547055220.









The German Woman is the story of an English woman, Kate Zwieg, a trained nurse who is married to a German surgeon, Horst Zweig. It is 1919 during WW1 and together they work serving injured soldiers from the battles in East Prussia. Fast forward twenty-five years and Kate is now in London, the summer of 1944, considered the summer that never was. It is now WWII, bombings, air-raids, skeletal framework of once magnificent structures and massive casualties are part of every day life. Kate, is now widowed, when she meets Claus at a political rally. The speaker at the gathering is spewing propaganda falsities to a crowd of onlookers. Kate is incensed by the disinformation and steps forward with a barrage of razor sharp barbs. Claus, or rather Charles, an exiled American with German heritage, works making propaganda films for the Ministry of Information. He is in the crowd and notices Kate, and is attracted to her spirit and he introduces himself to her. Claus is also happens to be a spy supplying valuable information to the German military, although sometimes not as accurate as it should be. He knows his life depends on secrecy and trusting no one, but he meets Kate and romance turns to unexpected love. At some point, he becomes suspicious of Kate and his duality of loyalty will rock his perspicacious resolve. Kate is almost a silent, passive participant as the action is seen through Claus and his struggle.
Paul Griner shows a natural talent of subterfuge as he carefully creates a complex mask of mirrors causing a magicians allusion for the audience to solve. There are passages of beautiful lyrical poetic prose that could fit a musical score.