The Project

Written by Courtney Summers

Wednesday Books (St. Martin's Press)

978-1-250-10573-8

352 pp.

Ages 12+

February 2021

 

In 2011, when Lo is just 13 years of age, she is critically injured in a car crash that kills her parents. Her 19-year-old sister Bea is called to the hospital and, in the chapel, begs for a miracle and Lev Warren appears. The miracle happens for Lo but Bea disappears from her life, leaving Lo in the care of their great aunt Patty.

Six years later, Lo knows Bea has joined Lev Warren's The Unity Project, an organization whose mission is to do good works to atone for all sins and bring salvation. After an earlier exposé investigating The Project as a cult, Lev has tried to keep The Project out of the media, focusing on their community work and annual public sermon. But, now working for SOV magazine, Lo is drawn to look into the organization again. While she has tried numerous times to reconnect with Bea, she is always kept away by Casey Byers, The Project's spokesperson and Lev's right hand. But Lo's interest is piqued by the death of a young man, Jeremy Lewis, whose father Arthur had been trying to save his son from The Unity Project. When Lo sees Bea in the photos Arthur's private investigator took of Jeremy, coupled with numerous voiceless calls she receives, Lo is determined to find Bea and learn more about The Project.

Alternating between the past and the present, primarily over seven years, Lo and Bea's stories unfold with Bea looking to prove herself worthy of a miracle she believes Lev performed and Lo looking for her sister. Their stories are eerily parallel, especially under the charismatic Lev who has become father, friend, therapist and even saviour to members of The Project. Both sisters are bereft because of their losses of family but each feels compelled to action because of The Project. But, it would seem, The Project has other things in mind.

Everyone should be prepared for an unnerving read in The Project. By balancing family and everyday living with the extremes of manipulation and doctrine, it's Courtney Summers at her best. Like her award-winning Sadie (2018), The Project is chilling in its possibilities because this could be someone's reality. A tragic accident, absolute faith in an irresistible leader, family estrangement, a compelling mission and the need for connection could all be elements of any of our lives and with her storytelling Courtney Summers will disquiet readers with the possibilities.

While her plotting is always sophisticated and involved, never leading the reader to a predictable ending, it's Courtney Summers's atmospheric writing that is most captivating. There's a perennial sense of foreboding, even with the most mundane of circumstances, like grabbing a cab or working in an office. Courtney Summers never lets the reader relax and maybe we shouldn't because bad things happen, even if dressed up as good.

 

Lo, the writer, tells Lev that...

If you tell a story–something real, something true–you get to be alive in other people. (pg. 251)

Thankfully Courtney Summers is alive and well by virtue of The Project and all her other stories. She tells the truth, even if it's unsettling.

The Lost Scroll of the Physician (Secrets of the Sands, Book 1)

Written by Alisha Sevigny

Dundurn

978-1-45974-429-5

272 pp.

Ages 8-13

January 2020

He looks up at me, expression bleak. "There is nothing you can do, Sesha. This is an ailment you cannot treat."

     "I will treat it," I say firmly. "And I swear by the gods I will find that scroll and see you cured." (pg. 129)

 

Thirteen-year-old Sesha  and her younger brother Ky have been fending for themselves for a month since the fire that killed their parents. Because Sesha had seen guards with the pharaoh's crest running from the burning house, Sesha believes Pharaoh had had their father Ay, Great Physician and Chief Scribe, killed, perhaps because of his last project. Though she doesn't know much about the scroll he'd been transcribing, she remembers hearing that it was by the Great Imhotep and might have great implications for the world but also save Ky's life.

When they are returned to the palace, Ky is delighted to be reunited with his friend Prince Tutan, Pharaoh's young son, but Sesha is wary of all, including Pharaoh; Wujat, their father's friend and Grand Vizier and former High Priest; the new physician Ahmes; Queen Anatmoset; the priest Nebifu; and Scribe Sebau. In her determination to find the scroll, she requests permission to study the medical arts with other scribes at the temple where her father's chambers had been. Pharaoh agrees on the assurance that she will search for the missing scroll which he claims to be an invaluable treatise for military surgery.

With the help of Pharaoh's daughter Merat and a scribe trainee, Paser, and some other unlikely allies, Sesha searches for the scroll so that she may help Ky, who has seizures because of an excess of fluid in his skull, but also disprove the rumour that her father was a heretic who believed only in practical medicine and not the magic of their gods, and learn who was responsible for their parents' deaths. But with those who have already harmed her parents determined to stop her efforts, Sesha must rely on her instincts and learned skills to persist in her quest if she is to save the only family she has left.

Set in Ancient Egypt, a unique culture rife with intrigue and peculiarities–the mummification Sesha witnesses as part of her studies is especially distinctive–The Lost Scroll of the Physician is at its heart a spellbinding mystery. Central to the story, of course, the plot to locate the missing scroll which could be anywhere or already discovered and perhaps destroyed. And with so many characters at the palace, at the temple and in the countryside, Alisha Sevigny has created a story that is embedded with treasonous villains, colourful happenings–from snake charming to a hippo hunt and the Festival of the Inundation–and a setting rich in history and ethos. Ancient Egypt becomes part of the story, not just the setting, giving readers even more story as they follow Sesha and her allies into the mastaba in which her parents are interred, or into the embalming room, or through the market where Ky steals food. The Lost Scroll of the Physician will delight middle grade readers with its history, its setting and, most of all, its gripping adventure and mystery which, though resolved, offers more to come.

With the release of The Desert Prince, Book 2 in the Secrets of the Sands series, slated for this September, we don't have long to wait until we get to accompany Sesha and her new friends on a new mission away from Thebes and undoubtedly into more danger and in conflict with new adversaries. 

Kate's Ring

Written by Donna Grassby

Red Deer Press

978-0-88995-567-7

276 pp.

Ages 11-15

October 2018

Thirteen-year-old Kate might wish for a ring just as her best friend has–Grace has an heirloom opal ring from her grandmother–but Kate's Ring is bigger than a child's dream to possess something special. That's because Kate's ring is not one of gold or silver but rather one of people and place.

It's the 1920s and Kate lives with her five younger siblings–Michael, David, Lily, Colin and Sarah–and her parents in Whitney Pier on Cape Breton. Though her story begins on a happy note with Poppa taking her out of school on her birthday to join him on his bread deliveries, Kate's story is not one filled with childhood joys. Mamma has consumption and is weak and often resting, while Poppa has started drinking and rarely at home. Sadly, the responsibilities for children and house fall to Kate, who begins to fall behind in school.  While there is family around, including Mamma's mother and siblings, there is much strife especially from Aunt Flora who constantly berates Poppa about his drinking and Mamma who always forgives him his ways and despises her sister's interference.  With Poppa unable to keep a job, he decides to get one logging on the mountain in Margaree, where his parents, Aigneis and Hector, live on a farm without electricity or indoor plumbing. Mamma is thrilled to go, though Aunt Flora convinces her to allow Kate to stay with her and Uncle Will to finish her school year, as on the mountain only Lily and David would be going to school.

For about three months, Kate experiences what it is like to have guardians who take care of her. They feed her, clothe her, love her and worry about her safety. Though her family is never far from her thoughts, she enjoys a real Christmas of family warmth. Then Aigneis insists that Kate join the rest of her family on the mountain as they need her help and her mother misses her.

While her mother promises her that Kate will return to school and not end up in service, Kate wonders how her mother can make such a promise, especially with Mamma feeling worse and praying to never leave the mountain. Though Kate appreciates some aspects of her new life, like learning skills like carding and spinning fleece as well as participating in a céilidh, she is more than ready to return to Whitney Pier when Mamma starts coughing up blood and collapses.

Though Aunt Flora continues to pass along money and food to the family via Kate, things are not much better with Mamma in the hospital. Unfortunately, things go from bad to worse and the family Kate has always known fractures with one tragedy after another. How the family will survive and in what configuration is only resolved through Donna Grassby's poignant storytelling, both heartbreaking and hopeful.

Kate's Ring is not a story of lightness and familial comfort. There are moments of joy, like when Kate's Aunt Flo and Uncle Will gift her with a pair of snowshoes or when she learns how to spin yarn, but Kate's life is more about responsibilities and chores and getting by. Sadly this probably has been the lot of many children whose families have had to deal with illness and financial woes, especially with parents who could not be there for their children because of their own troubles. Still Kate accepts her responsibilities for her siblings and her family without much fuss; instead she just does what is expected and necessary while holding onto a sliver of faith that things will right themselves. Even the  book's cover upholds the idea that sometimes, even when you feel like you're a long way out from the safety of shore, there's more rain to come.

Setting Kate's Ring in 1920s Cape Breton, Donna Grassby makes sure young readers see that childhood was not always about play and school. Sometimes it was whatever was needed to help the family out. And by contrasting life in towns and in rural areas, where you might or might not have electricity and plumbing, where travel happened by horse, car and train, and not all children were fortunate enough to go to school, Donna Grassby embeds that story of loss and hardship in families of different shapes. It's family created, sustained and reconfigured that makes Kate's Ring real for the time and for now.

A Girl Like That

Written by Tanaz Bhathena

Farrar Straus Giroux

978-0-374-30544-4

369 pp.

Ages 13-18

February 2018

Zarin Wadia, sixteen, is A Girl Like That. She's seen as provocative, rebellious, and clever but her story is one of tragedy from birth to her death.

Zarin's death, along with that of a young man, Porus Dumasia, in a car accident is not a surprise ending. It begins the book with Zarin's guardians, Masi (mother's sister) and Masa (maternal uncle), and Porus's mother wailing over the dead teens. How they got there which is essentially Zarin's back story is the story of A Girl Like That. Told in multiple voices of Zarin, Porus, a gossipy classmate Mishal, and a boy Farhan with whom Zarin becomes involved, Tanaz Bhathena's first young adult novel is a study in nature vs. nurture for a teen whose origins were considered shameful and whose upbringing was rife with physical and emotional abuse. 

Memories...can be like splinters, digging into you when you least expect them to, holding tight and sharp the way wood did when it slid under a fingernail. (pg. 27)

Zarin is never made to feel like she belongs. Not with her Masi and Masa who take her in after her unmarried mother's death or at Qala Academy, the school she attends after they move from India to Saudi Arabia. She is shamed at home by her abusive and mentally ill Masi–and infrequently defended by Masa–for her illegitimacy, her gangster father and issues related to her being a girl. At school, a place where rumours are currency, especially for Mishal the anonymous BlueNiqab blogger and gossip monger, Zarin's classmates look down their noses at her for her heritage and standoffish ways. Still, Zarin endures. She hides the abuses and thumbs her nose at those who shame her. She smokes and she goes riding in cars with boys, an offense according to Sharia law.

And then her childhood Parsi friend, Porus, moves to Jeddah with his mother after the death of his beloved father. Zarin and Porus resume their friendship though it is an unconventional one, with Porus completely smitten and Zarin dating other boys and not sure she is capable of loving anyone. When Zarin is the victim of an assault by Farhan, her world at home and school dissolves into a muddy mess of anger, gossip, shaming, and revenge, with Zarin's desperately searching for courage and safety, within and without.

A Girl Like That is garnering much attention because of Tanaz Bhathena's story about gender inequality and religion-based social restrictions in Saudi Arabia. By focusing on a world that is intimate to many but foreign to so many others, Tanaz Bhathena is both honouring those who live Zarin's life and educating those unfamiliar with the restrictions and distinctions of living with abuse, segregation, cultural discrimination, gender inequality and religious policing.  But beyond the cultural milieu, A Girl Like That is still a statement about the need for self-expression, to fight self and others, to become who you are. Zarin's story is still a tragedy for the abuses inflicted upon her by family, both young men and women, and her cultures but she finds a way to fly, even without wings.

Because a bird only learns to fly when its wings are broken. (pg. 318)

An Infidel in Paradise

by S. J. Laidlaw

Tundra Books

978-1-77049-304-9

311 pp.

Ages 12+

February, 2013

in·fi·del
noun \ˈin-fə-dəl, -fə-ˌdel\
1 : one who is not a Christian or who opposes Christianity
2 a : an unbeliever with respect to a particular religion b : one who acknowledges no religious belief
3 : a disbeliever in something specified or understood

Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/infidel on May 8, 2013

Under this definition of infidel, just about anyone could be called an infidel.  Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, agnostics - all could be considered infidels by another group.  Yet the scathing judgement that is leveled against sixteen-year-old Emma as a Canadian teen forced to live in Islamabad, Pakistan is especially outrageous; she doesn't want to be there anymore than anyone else wants her there.

After her dad takes off with the family maid from their posting in Manila, Emma Grey's family (older brother Vince, younger sister Mandy and Mom) relocate to Pakistan for her mother's job, running the consular section of the Canadian embassy. Though embassy children are used to moving around a lot, the whole "make-new-friends and learn-to-fit-in" process required to make lifetolerable seems more problematic for Emma this time, probably because of her father's absence and mother's absorption in her work and obliviousness to her children's needs.  Emma is resentful of her mother for forcing them to move (this was a weak effort to make Dad choose between his family and new partner), and for expecting more of Emma specifically, including mothering eight-year-old Mandy.  Not surprising that Emma is brutally honest when asked by a new classmate, Mustapha Khan, how she is enjoying Pakistan.

"Well," I begin, feeling the familiar anger wakening like a beast inside me, "there's not a single mall, movie theater, or Caramel Frappuccino within a thousand miles, but there are huge poisonous reptiles, beggars on every street corner and all the atmosphere of a maximum-security penitentiary.  I'm just surprised there's not more tourism." (pg. 21-22)

 Ouch.  Not the way to make friends and influence people apparently.  Although she is quickly welcomed by Angie, a girl from the American compound, and introduced to her friends, Leeza, Jazzy and Tahira, Emma's candour and insistence on personal freedom place her at odds with several students, including Aisha, Mustapha's wealthy "promised" one, and Faarooq, protective and strict brother of Tahira.

All conflict is compounded when Mustapha continues to pay attention to Emma, much to Aisha's irritation, and Emma and Mustapha are thrown into a drama group with Faarooq and another boy Ali to produce a skit about conflict, first focusing on a racist American girl (hint?) and then on a Pakistani boy who likes a Canadian girl.  And, although Emma enlists Angie's help to avoid being alone with Mustapha, knowing that she is attracted to him, she and Mustapha are repeatedly thrown together, sometimes because he chooses to be with her and sometimes because he wants to be kind.  It all makes for much cultural and romantic confusion.

I can't imagine the transient lifestyle of foreign service families and the particular skills that the children must need to navigate new lives successfully.  Couple that with divorced parents and living with a workaholic mother and in a tenuous political-religious situation, and you've got all the makings of a disaster.  S. J. Laidlaw thankfully has given Emma the wicked sense of humour, common sense and heart to find a way to help Mandy and herself, as well as carve a niche for themselves in their new world.  She finds a source of wisdom, recognizing the value in the kind and comforting Mr. Akbar, and has enough insight to recognize her own flaws and address them as she can.

S. J. Laidlaw could have imbued "An Infidel in Paradise" with the same resentment that is implied in the scathing indictment of "Infidel!" leveled against Emma but she does not.  Instead, she plays with the idea that the safety of "inside", whether it be the compound, one's comfort zone or culture, and the danger of "outside" is not always the case.  It has more to do with perception and broaching that transition with caution in an effort to make both territories manageable.  Even Emma is able to find herself accepting her new life as "An Infidel in Paradise."

Virginia

Written by Susan Hughes
Kids Can Press
978-1-55453-306-0
287 pp.
Ages 14+
2010

Having just reviewed Susan Hughes' most recent book, Off to Class: Incredible and Unusual Schools Around the World (Owlkids, 2012), one of the few non-fiction books I've reviewed, I thought I'd include a review of a young adult novel by this same author from a few years back. If you think Susan Hughes is limited to only non-fiction, you'll have to read her novel, Virginia (Kids Can Press, 2010) which I feel is an overlooked gem.

While Ivy deals with her alcoholic mother and ineffective father, the fourteen-year-old girl tries to help her childhood friend Virginia who is convinced she has been visited by an angel and that she has been selected to carry God's child. Though Ivy and Virginia have not been close for awhile, Ivy feels she must help Virginia, especially as she seems to be kept secluded by her sisters and charismatic brother, Paul. After their father's death, Paul has started his own church, one that emphasizes the inevitable end of the world. When Ivy overhears Paul suggesting the need to hasten that end with violence, Ivy gets help from another brother of Virginia's, Joe, to keep the innocent safe.

Once Susan Hughes takes the time to introduce Ivy and Virginia and their former relationship, Virginia becomes a highly suspenseful, plot-driven story that kept me engrossed until the end. Paul's zealous sect, Virginia's angel visit and Ivy's detective work, within the context of family interrelationships, were uniquely juxtaposed against each other. Reality and fantasy seemed to meander into the other's realm. With Ivy 's attraction to Joe and her worries about Virginia getting pregnant, as well as Paul's violent agenda, this novel is more appropriate for an older audience than for the recently reviewed Off to Class but it is equally effective in telling its story. Susan Hughes' writing handles both, the fiction and the non-fiction, beautifully and appropriately, putting her in the company of the few authors who can do this well.