A Northern Light details the journey of Mattie Gokey, a young woman who finds herself trapped in her hometown Eagle Bay. She yearns to attend college in New York City and become a writer, but the likelihood of that wish coming to pass is dying. As the spring and summer of 1906 pass, Mattie is ordered to stay on the family farm and step in as mother of the house. New beau Royal Loomis is also holding her back with his plans of marriage and a farming life. Yet, outside of her home, the young woman is being urged to escape and find a new life by her beloved teacher Miss Wilcox. Mattie must ignore the expectations of others and decide for herself whether or not she will attend college, and, if she does decide to go, how she will finance her new journey. In the end, A Northern Light shows the importance of making your own choices and writing your own story.
Not only do the characters add depth to A Northern Light, but the various subplots enrich the novel and keep the reader engaged at every turn as well. Intertwined with her struggle to attend college are the trials of Mattie’s friend, the brilliant visionary Weaver Smith, an African American who plans on becoming a lawyer and achieving racial equality the world but is currently stuck saving money for college and dealing with racist behavior from out of town guests. Carefully crafted frustration at how the cards seem stacked against him leads the reader to wait with baited breath to see Weaver come out on top. On the other side of Mattie’s internal struggle is another story line, this one featuring the gorgeous but simple minded Royal Loomis. Despite his inability to understand her ambitions or even love of literature, Mattie becomes entrapped in a fast moving relationship, hurtling towards marriage and life on a farm. The reader can only watch in horror as the chapters pass, praying for a different outcome. However, these conflicts seem commonplace when compared with the plot taking place only a few months in the future. The day Grace Brown, a guest at the hotel where Mattie is working, drowned on a boating trip with her beau, instructs the young teen to burn a collection of letters. Mixed in with Mattie’s sadness over the woman’s death is a suspicious curiosity of the letters. After finally giving in and beginning to read the correspondence, she unleashes a murder mystery onto the pages of a once innocent novel. As details about Grace’s past are dropped and the story switches from plot to plot the reader becomes more and more desperate to know the truth about what happened on the lake. A Northern Light is an expertly woven tapestry of narratives that take turns exciting the reader and upping one’s need to know what will happen.
The life-like characters and many, well played out plots keep the reader gasping to the end, desperate to know what will happen to all of the people they have grown to love. Most of all, one stays hooked onto Mattie’s curving path towards college and a life that is truly her own. As a result, A Northern Light is an emotional, completely engaging, and satisfying read that no one would regret.