Strange, Lucy Secret of Nightingale Wood

Strange, Lucy Secret of Nightingale Wood Scholastic/Chicken House    2017   288p   16.99  978-1-338-15747-5            ms/jr  Realistic Fiction            E-BN   

After the death of her beloved brother, Henrietta is left to grieve alone when her mother becomes emotionally ill.  In desperation, her father goes abroad to work, leaving Hen to try to bring the family back together.            

Sometimes the comments on the book jacket are spot on and sometimes, a stretch of the imagination.  Readers recognize that critics come in many sizes and shapes, often offering generic, shining comments to entice readers to purchase a book.  In this case, Pam Munoz Ryan said, “From the first page, I was entirely smitten and compelled to read on until I finished this mysterious and poignant story.”  Spot on.  The poetic style of Lucy Strange pervades this debut novel, embracing a beautiful, yet nearly tragic, story of young Henrietta who is forced to become an adult at age 13.  Father leaves home, unable to face his wife’s deteriorating mental state.  Nanny Jane has her hands full with an ill mother, a baby and 13-year-old Hen, especially when Mother becomes a bedridden patient of Dr. Hardy and to Hen, seems to grow more distant by the minute.  Henrietta has taken to wandering the woods, especially after meeting a reclusive type, a witch-like woman in both actions and appearance.  Lucy Strange masterfully weaves a subplot into the main plot:  apparently the previous owner of the house lost her son in the war and took her own life by disappearing at sea.  Could Henrietta’s witch, Moth, be the woman who disappeared?  Meanwhile, Henrietta watches helplessly as Dr. Hardy takes her baby sister away, at the same time he is plotting to put Mother in an insane asylum to receive experimental treatments that seem to Hen to be torturous.  Just as Henrietta is poised to watch her family fall apart, she becomes empowered, but not without help.  As if the drama of this story were not enough for a reader, it is the way Strange tells the story that contributes equally to the power of this novel.  There is a fine line between sanity and insanity, sometimes, and Strange finds the words to convey this line exquisitely.                          Squaresky, Martha          Mama’s depression consumes her after Henrietta’s brother dies