From Junior Library Guild It is 1906, and sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey has ambitions that reach far beyond her family's homestead in the Adirondacks. Mattie dreams of going to college and becoming a writer, but she promised her dying mother she would watch over the family. Then a young woman is found drowned near the hotel where Mattie works. On the day the victim died, she instructed Mattie to destroy her personal letters. Instead, Mattie reads the letters and rethinks her own life. Author's note. Jennifer Donnelly was born in Port Chester, New York. She wanted to write for as long as she can remember: "I spent much of my childhood inflicting really bad stories and poems on my family and teachers. I think it all came from growing up in a family of storytellers. "I consider two places home – Brooklyn, where I live now, and Port Leyden, a small town on the western edge of the Adironacks, where my Irish ancestors settled and where I spent a good deal of my childhood. "Poor and uneducated, my ancestors farmed, worked in hotels, and logged to earn their living. There was no money for entertainment, so they entertained themselves by singing, dancing, and telling stories. Storytelling was the only legacy they had to give, but it was a rich one. At family gatherings, I was always madly impatient for the eating to be over and the stories to begin. "One of the saddest I'd ever heard was about a young woman named Grace Brown, pregnant and unwed, who was drowned in Big Moose Lake, about thirty miles from my home. She was killed by the father of her child, a man named Chester Gillette, because he did not wish to marry her. When I got older, I read An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser, a novel based on her story, as well as nonfiction accounts of her murder. I also read Grace's letters – letters she'd written to Gillette, pleading with him to take her away before her condition became apparent. These letters were discovered in Gillette's room after his arrest. "Grace's Brown's words affected me deeply. There was fear and despair in those lines, but there was much else, too – a good heart, intelligence, wit. I wondered what Grace's life would have been like if she'd been allowed to live it. I wanted a different end to her story. I wanted to rewrite the past. And so, Mattie Gokey – the heroine of A Northern Light was born." A picture book by Ms. Donnelly, Humble Pie, illustrated by Stephen Gammell, and an adult historical novel, The Tea Rose, were both published in 2002. "My books – both young adult and adult – are all historical and involve a great deal of research, so I'm always on the prowl for history books, or traveling to places I write about," she says. "That sounds like work, but it isn't. I still get quite carried away by the prospect of a visit to a castle, fort, or palace. I really love spending time in the company of old dead people." "The only problem with this passion of mine is that it's all-consuming. It's very tough to do laundry and go grocery shopping when you've just been at the Battle of Agincourt or the trial of Marie Antoinette. History ruins you for real life." Copyright © 2006 Jennifer Donnelly