Skip to main content

"One Came Home" by Amy Timberlake



I was both utterly delighted and totally bummed when One Came Home by Amy Timberlake was named a Newbery Honor book this past January. Delighted because I love the book and told a few people (including other librarians) about it. Bummed because I have had “Blog One Came Home” on my Things to Do List since March 2013. And now everyone was going to know about it before I blogged.

One Came Home excites me because it’s lyrical, it has an outstanding brave and human heroine, and it’s a quest novel. And it’s a quest novel that is not fantasy or science fiction! In fact, it’s historical fiction set in 1871 Wisconsin. Our heroine Georgie Burkhardt (13 years old) begins the novel by telling us she is attending the funeral of her older sister Agatha (18), but that she knows that Agatha hasn’t died (there wasn’t enough left of the body found on the side of the road for a proper ID), she’s just run away to attend the University of Wisconsin at Madison. So, there’s Georgie’s call to action. If no one else will go look for Agatha, she will. Georgie gets supernatural aid in the form of Billy McCabe (19), a young man in love with Agatha. Billy loans Georgie a mule (she asked for a horse) and then goes along with her.

The road of trials Georgie travels on includes pigeon-nesting sites, a cougar, more insects and bugs than she is comfortable with, a mini-betrayal by Billy, and counterfeiters. Georgie even develops a slight crush on Billy (a calling of the flesh). When they reach the place where the body was found, Georgie seems to have an apotheosis – at first, she seems ready to accept that her sister has died, but then she gets a brainstorm about what might have happened.

The rest of the novel is chaotic (in a good way) and thrilling (and a quest novel to the end). Georgie is a treasure. I love how she – a town girl who has never ridden a mule before, let alone the horse she asked for – deals with the great outdoors and uses the skills she picked up by working in the family store to track down Agatha. She also is a crack shot, which comes in very handy in the third part of the novel. I also love the language of this book, especially one scene in which Georgie is describing how her sister went out among a huge flock of pigeons and twirled with them. Or this passage where Georgie is relishing the moment:

Pause a moment. Feel the air surround the moment. Push against it, and find it truly exists. Blow on it, and see how the tiny barbs snag the wind and lift. Watch it fly.


Amy Timberlake has set this story against the backdrop of a huge passenger pigeon migration. Sadly, as Timberlake states in her author’s note, passenger pigeons are now extinct. They once numbered in the billions, she writes, but the last one died in 1914. (Even Timberlake’s author’s note is beautifully written, by the way.)

Highly recommended.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What I Haven't Read in 2017

I made an odd sort of promise to myself this year: Read fewer books. The past few years, I been reading at a pace of about 100 books per year – a mix of children’s (but not counting picture books), young adult, and adult – and I felt as if I was reading too quickly and perhaps forgetting what I was reading. (Thank goodness for Goodreads.)
However, I consider it a very important part of my job as a librarian to keep up with what’s published, even if it’s a daunting task. Hundreds of thousands books are published each year in this country, so obviously it’s beyond even a superhero librarian (and I’m not one of those) to keep all those titles straight. But I try to at least know something about some books. We have two public-facing desks in my library – one is called the information desk; the other, reference. If you are working at the information desk, you will be asked for book recommendations. You will be asked, have you read this book? You will be asked to help select a book for a r…
Post a Comment
Read more

"Beartown" by Fredrik Backman

I’m about to be overly effusive: I loved Beartown by Fredrik Backman and I think it is one of the best books I’ve ever read. (See Tangent 1.)

Backman lured us into his Swedish world of curmudgeons and the neighbors who love them with A Man Called Ove and his other novellas. But this isn’t A Man Called Ove. This book has a much larger scope. This feels like the book Backman has always wanted to write but had to wait to give to us until he developed an audience. You got it, bro. I will read whatever else you write in the future. This book more deeply develops his ideas about communities. It is also about parenthood and all the responsibilities that go along with it. It’s about family and best friends who are like family. It’s about belonging. It’s about sorrow and happiness. And there’s some hockey. (Tangent 2.)
You will hate some of the parents (Kevin’s, William’s). You will love some of the teens (Amat, Maya, Ana, Benji, Bobo, Leo...). Be prepared to feel emotions. The characters – a…
Post a Comment
Read more