Spoilers Ahead
After a string of predictable Schurfranz Sunfires, this couldn't help but be an improvement. Boy howdy, was it!
Elizabeth Fallon comes to Saugus, MA with her brother & sister in tow, the unfortunate objects of charity by her uncle, who doesn't let them forget for one minute just how grateful they should be. He's a forbidding, hardline Puritan and his more footloose kin from Boston don't sit well with him. As soon as Elizabeth and her siblings arrive in Saugus, they get a taste of the strict Puritan life with work, punishment, and eight hours of sermons on Sunday. Mark gets on Uncle's bad side from the get-go and pays for it, while Elizabeth tries to be dutiful and a cipher within the community. If I don't make waves, she thinks, I won't get into trouble. Well, trouble comes to her anyway. In her attempt to make friends, she settles on two vastly different girls: Nell Woodward, an orphaned transplant from Barbados with something of a free spirit, and Dorothy Givens, the daughter of the town minister that thunders at his flock and has the whole town cowed, like any powerful holy man worth his salt should.
Unfortunately, Dorothy is a tramp, and Elizabeth's advice to her to keep her skirts down (figuratively) goes gleefully ignored. Lie upon lie eventually come to a point where Dorothy decides to sacrifice someone else to charges of witchcraft rather than face the consequences of being condemned as harlot. Her father, naturally, would rather that happen as well than be made a laughingstock by his congregation.
The crux of the story is that of Elizabeth's conscience and courage. For most of the story, she's an utter coward - bending to the dictates of her uncle and the community. It's the Puritan code that actions by one reflect on the entire family, and should Elizabeth say anything against "respectable members," retribution and judgment will be swift. This fear is heightened by the reports coming from Salem of witches, coupled with unvoiced suspicions by level-headed folk that magic isn't at the root of it, but rather human faults like envy and greed. For a group that fled English persecution, they live in a prison of their own making, and Elizabeth's paralyzed immobility when she sees wrongdoing around her illustrates that wonderfully.
Now, the romance: it's obvious from the get-go who Elizabeth will end up with but, despite that predictable element, the romance in the book, usually so detached from the events of the story, is integrated into the plot. Elizabeth is courted by one of those respectable members, and as her crisis of conscience approaches, so does her decision about what a life with him would entail. She doesn't like what she sees. Her other suitor, a courtship more under the surface, is from one of those pesky logical types that were so persecuted by the good Puritans. Yet he, like Elizabeth, finds himself paralyzed to act on his convictions, partly because of community pressure, and partly because he has his own family agenda. Both he and Elizabeth take the long view of the consequences of speaking out, but eventually bend to their consciences.
This was one of the deeper Sunfires, more a story about what it means to be honest, true to oneself, and leading by example, than a story about a girl being batted about by hormones. I enjoyed it from first page to last and will be moving Roberts' adult HF higher up on the To Read list.
After a string of predictable Schurfranz Sunfires, this couldn't help but be an improvement. Boy howdy, was it!
Elizabeth Fallon comes to Saugus, MA with her brother & sister in tow, the unfortunate objects of charity by her uncle, who doesn't let them forget for one minute just how grateful they should be. He's a forbidding, hardline Puritan and his more footloose kin from Boston don't sit well with him. As soon as Elizabeth and her siblings arrive in Saugus, they get a taste of the strict Puritan life with work, punishment, and eight hours of sermons on Sunday. Mark gets on Uncle's bad side from the get-go and pays for it, while Elizabeth tries to be dutiful and a cipher within the community. If I don't make waves, she thinks, I won't get into trouble. Well, trouble comes to her anyway. In her attempt to make friends, she settles on two vastly different girls: Nell Woodward, an orphaned transplant from Barbados with something of a free spirit, and Dorothy Givens, the daughter of the town minister that thunders at his flock and has the whole town cowed, like any powerful holy man worth his salt should.
Unfortunately, Dorothy is a tramp, and Elizabeth's advice to her to keep her skirts down (figuratively) goes gleefully ignored. Lie upon lie eventually come to a point where Dorothy decides to sacrifice someone else to charges of witchcraft rather than face the consequences of being condemned as harlot. Her father, naturally, would rather that happen as well than be made a laughingstock by his congregation.
The crux of the story is that of Elizabeth's conscience and courage. For most of the story, she's an utter coward - bending to the dictates of her uncle and the community. It's the Puritan code that actions by one reflect on the entire family, and should Elizabeth say anything against "respectable members," retribution and judgment will be swift. This fear is heightened by the reports coming from Salem of witches, coupled with unvoiced suspicions by level-headed folk that magic isn't at the root of it, but rather human faults like envy and greed. For a group that fled English persecution, they live in a prison of their own making, and Elizabeth's paralyzed immobility when she sees wrongdoing around her illustrates that wonderfully.
Now, the romance: it's obvious from the get-go who Elizabeth will end up with but, despite that predictable element, the romance in the book, usually so detached from the events of the story, is integrated into the plot. Elizabeth is courted by one of those respectable members, and as her crisis of conscience approaches, so does her decision about what a life with him would entail. She doesn't like what she sees. Her other suitor, a courtship more under the surface, is from one of those pesky logical types that were so persecuted by the good Puritans. Yet he, like Elizabeth, finds himself paralyzed to act on his convictions, partly because of community pressure, and partly because he has his own family agenda. Both he and Elizabeth take the long view of the consequences of speaking out, but eventually bend to their consciences.
This was one of the deeper Sunfires, more a story about what it means to be honest, true to oneself, and leading by example, than a story about a girl being batted about by hormones. I enjoyed it from first page to last and will be moving Roberts' adult HF higher up on the To Read list.
