Richie's Picks: FORGE by Laurie Halse Anderson, Atheneum, October 2010,
304p., ISBN: 978-1-4169-6144-5
"How many years can some people exist
before they're allowed to be free?"
-- Bob Dylan
"'Stop there! the boy yelled.
"The redcoat glanced behind him, caught his foot on a half-buried root,
and fell hard. His musket flew from his hand, but he quickly crawled to it.
"'You are my prisoner, sir,' the boy declared in a shaky voice. 'Lay down
your musket.'
"The redcoat had no intention of becoming a prisoner. He pulled out a
gunpowder cartridge, ripped it open with his teeth, and poured powder into his
firing pan. His hands were shaking so violently that most of the powder
fell to the ground."
The question that had come to me shortly after my beginning to read FORGE,
and which continued to bug me was: How exactly does Laurie Halse Anderson
write historical fiction so that it can be so easily read; so well enjoyed;
and in such a manner that readers can connect so readily with characters
who lived so long ago?
"Stop!' The boy brought his musket up to fire. 'I swear I'll shoot.' He
wiped his right hand on his breeches, then cocked the firelock and slipped
his finger in the trigger guard.
"The redcoat fumbled in his shot bag for a lead musketball.
"The boy squeezed the trigger. His flint hit the empty firing pan with a
dull click. The musket didn't fire. He'd forgotten to prime his pan.
"The redcoat pulled out his ramrod.
"The boy grabbed the cork out of his powder horn.
"My palms were sweating, my eyes going back and forth trying to figger who
would win the race to load and shoot."
How does she do it? It seems to come down to the employment of
straightforward sentences of moderate length; details that provide a sense of the
characters being young people just like the young people we know -- for better
or for worse -- in our own lives; and a lot of great scenes, both tense
ones and humorous ones. Solid writing skills that synergize into page after
page of exceptional and accessible story about the historic past.
That Laurie Halse Anderson's award-winning historical fiction can be so
easily read also permits readers to more readily comprehend how what happened
a long time ago can still have such significance today.
Maybe these conclusions to which I've arrived are obvious things you
already know, but that question had really been bugging me. I have always been
attracted to historical fiction, but the Revolutionary-era tales I read
during my own young years always led me to feel that the characters
encountered had a lot more in common with Early Man than they did with me.
In contrast, here in FORGE, every time Curzon violently (and endearingly)
twists his own ear to remind himself to stop once again thinking about
Isabel (our heroine from CHAINS who has saved his life at the end of the first
book and with whom he loses contact), we realize that, deep down, this is
just like us doing the boy-girl thing back in high school.
"I twisted my ear so often in the weeks that followed, it swelled like a
puffball. Did me no good; I still thought about Isabel. Her face has
poisoned my mind the way the cold had taken hold of my bones."
FORGE is set amidst the 1777-8 winter encampment that Washington and his
troops established at Valley Forge, northwest of Philadelphia. As she did
so effectively in CHAINS, Anderson again begins each chapter with intriguing
quotations she has compiled while doing research for these books. The
writers of these quotes include unknown foot soldiers as well as a who's who
of interesting and important Revolutionary characters like Paine, Gates,
Washington, Rush, Laurens, Morris, (Mrs.) Adams, and Lafayette.
"'It would be useless for us to denounce the servitude to which the
Parliament of Great Britain wishes to reduce us, while we continue to keep our
fellow creatures in slavery just because their color is different from ours.'
Signer of the Declaration of Independence Dr. Benjamin Rush, who purchased
William Grubber in 1776 and did not free him until 1794."
Of course, the underlying question FORGE prompts, as did CHAINS, is: Who
was actually gaining freedom through this Declaration of Independence and
subsequent war, and why was it not everyone?
"How many times can a man turn his head
pretending he just doesn't see"
The failure of the Founders to provide the appropriate answers to these
questions; their permitting the continued enslavement of humans somehow
justified through a difference in skin color is, of course the number one cause
of America's failure to ever live up to its true potential. The treachery
that befalls Curzon here in FORGE is part of an ever-present thread that
can be followed from the Revolutionary era right into our own lifetimes.
Those who held power amongst the revolutionaries, along with leaders and
constituents who have come in the intervening generations since, all bear
responsibility for the horrors with which I've spent my life living: the brutal
memories I both witnessed in person as a little child, and viewed again and
again on the nightly news. These are the despicable and nightmarish
things that have been said and done throughout our nation's history to people
of color and those of good conscience in retaliation for their standing up
for what was and is fair and just.
"My head laid itself on the table and I was no longer master of my own
body, of my head, of my heart and somewhere my father was angry and I did not
know how to explain. My eyes closed themselves.
"I will kill Bellingham."
All that I will say about the last section of the book (in the spring when
the privies filled by ten thousand soldiers start to melt, causing the
birds to start flying around the encampment instead of over it) is that the
story really cranks into overdrive and that I finished up FORGE with a huge
smile on my face.
Are any of you still wondering whether there is some let-down in this
middle book of the trilogy?
Ha! With Laurie Halse Anderson in command? Not on your life!
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks _http://richiespicks.com_ (http://richiespicks.com/)
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
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FTC NOTICE: Richie receives free books from lots of publishers who hope he
will Pick their books. You can figure that any review was written after
reading and dog-earring a free copy received. Richie retains these review
copies for his rereading pleasure and for use in his booktalks at schools
and libraries.
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