Every so
often a book comes along that is so splendid/marvelous/fabulous that I want to
go to the top of the highest building and shout out how splendid/marvelous/fabulous it is.
Since the tallest building around here is not tall at all and I would not reach
many people shouting from the top, I am going to tell you about my latest Great
Find.
The book is called Destiny Revealed and it was written by Kathryn Fitzmaurice. The story explores how one eleven-old girl tries to understand what destiny is. She has been told that she will be a poet when she grows up, but what if she doesn't want to be a poet? What then? Can she write her own destiny?
Kathryn Fitzmaurice
Fiction
For ages 9 and up
HarperCollins, 2013,
978-0-06-162501-5
The day before her baby daughter is to born, Isabella goes
to a second hand bookshop where she hopes she will be able find a name for her
child. She is looking for a name that will set her daughter’s “life direction.”
After discarding Juliet as too tragic a name, Isabella finds a copy of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, and
she knows in her heart that she has found what she is looking for. Her baby
will be called Emily, and she will grow up to be a poet.
Emily is now eleven years old and she really does not care
for poetry, though she does try to. She has the copy of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson that her mother bought and it
is Emily’s most treasured possession because her mother has made notes in the
book to commemorate important days in Emily’s life. The book tells Emily’s
story. Or at least most of it. Emily still has no idea who her father is. Isabella
firmly believes that when the time is right Emily will know who her father is.
The problem is that Emily does not feel like waiting for that moment, and what
if it doesn’t even exist? Emily wants to know who her father is now and she is
stunned when her mother finally tells her that her father’s name is written in
Emily’s precious copy of The Complete
Poems of Emily Dickinson.
Emily runs to get her book only to find out that it got
mixed up in a donation for Goodwill. The book is gone. Emily can hardly believe
that her book, with all those wonderful notes from her mother, is gone forever.
Emily’s mother believes that the book got lost because Emily wasn’t ready to
find her father’s name. Isabella insists that things cannot be forced; they
should be allowed to happen when they are supposed to happen, when they are
destined to happen. Emily finds it hard to accept her mother’s take on destiny,
and she wants to find that book no matter what it takes.
It ends up taking a lot. Emily and her mother go to the
Goodwill store, but the book isn’t there. The person working at Goodwill tells
them that the books are often picked over early by people buying books for
bookstores. Now Emily is going to have search who knows how many book stores to
find her book.
Desperate to find the book with her father’s name in it, Emily
even goes so far as to set aside her rigidly organized and predictable way of
doing things. She forces herself to be unpredictable, even when doing so pains
her. She will do whatever it takes if there is a chance that she will find the
book with its precious notes. She never expects that her journey will be full
of surprises. As she tries to understand what is happening around her she will
question who controls her destiny, and she will end up opening doors that she
didn’t even know were there.
In this extraordinary book Kathryn Fitzmaurice explores the
inner world of a young girl whose mother made a decision about her child’s future
when that child was just an infant. It is quite remarkable to be able to see
how Emily struggles to come to terms with the path her mother chose for her; a
path that Emily does not feel is right for her. Emily’s voice, and the voices
of the other characters in the book, are delightfully honest, genuine, and
often sweetly funny, and readers will grow to love the quirky people who live
in Emily’s world.
Though this book was written for younger readers, adults
will get a lot out of reading it. They may even question the path they are on.
It is a path that they are supposed to be following?
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