At the Firefly Gate Review

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At the Firefly Gate ReviewSometimes good things really do come in small packages. Linda Newbery's "At the Firefly Gate" is a gem of a 152-page novel for the Middle Grade reader.
"At the Firefly Gate" weaves together two stories set some fifty years apart with the help of one ghost, some visions, and an elderly neighbor. The contemporary story begins when sixth-form student, Henry, moves from London to Suffolk: "3, Church Cottages, Crickford St. Thomas, Suffolk, was the sort of address Henry's mum had always wanted."
Henry doesn't share this dream, however, and to add insult to injury his parents moved before the last week of school. To help him make friends over the summer, they force Henry to spend time with his prickly next door neighbor, Grace. Grace is a year older than Henry and wants little to do with him. Fortunately, her great aunt Dottie takes an instant liking to Henry and makes him feel at home.
On his first evening in Suffolk, Henry catches sight of a man standing by the gate at the end of Henry's garden, staring up at him. The man is smoking and surrounded by fireflies. Soon Henry is dreaming from the point of view of this man, the dreams taking him back fifty years to a war-time food stand and a pretty girl with bright blue eyes.
Newbery brings the present and past together beautifully in "At the Firefly Gate." The ghost story never seems contrived--the present and past overlap neatly in Henry's new village life. I also appreciated that Henry, albeit momentarily freaked out by the changes in his life, is more curious than frightened by his glimpse into the past. Henry takes his challenges as they come, be they real world (Grace, new school, new friends) or ghostly.
"At the Firefly Gate" is a stunner--a book I'll be pushing on everyone I know older than eight years old.
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Forgiven Review

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Forgiven ReviewKula Baker has always lived on the edge of danger with an outlaw for a father. But now that she's grown, she's ready to go out into the world and make a respectable life for herself, where hopefully she'll catch the eye of a rich young man who will marry her. But when her father refuses to leave outlawing, saying that he has one last piece of business to take care of, Kula is forced to go alone...only to witness her father being arrested for a murder he didn't commit. Kula travels to San Francisco, hoping to find a man named Ty Wong and a mysterious box that will save her father...and ends up discovering long-buried secrets about her father she never expected.

Forgiven is a fast-paced and unique historical novel, with a strong and noble protagonist. Kula is headstrong and determined to save her father, but a little naive in her methods. After a life slightly outside of the law, she's certain that marriage will give her the kind of respectability and security she craves. However, she is in for a few surprises as her romantic interests don't always go the way she plans and she falls for a Chinese man. Their romance seems a little rushed, but it is sweet and complements the more dangerous aspects of the novel as Kula searches for her father's box and in doing so, stumbles upon the darker side of turn of the century San Francisco with its human trafficking of female Chinese immigrants. That aspect, while horrifying, was a fascinating bit of history that Fox didn't expound upon nearly enough. The book ends with the great earthquake that shook the city in 1906, which hurriedly forced the book to conclude realistically, but slightly unsatisfactorily. Forgiven is a book that contains an interesting, complicated narrator and some fascinating historical tidbits, but as a whole seemed a little disjointed. The companion novel, Faithful, was a much better read.Forgiven OverviewKula Baker never expected to find herself on the streets of San Francisco, alone but for a letter of introduction. Though she has come to the city to save her father from a cruel fate, Kula soon finds herself swept up in a world of art and elegance - a world she hardly dared dream of back in Montana, where she was no more than the daughter of an outlaw. And then there is the handsome David Wong, whose smiling eyes and soft-spoken manner have an uncanny way of breaking through Kula's carefully crafted reserve. Yet when disaster strikes and the wreckage threatens all she holds dear, Kula realizes that only by unlocking her heart can she begin to carve a new future for herself.

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