The Whitsun Daughters

June 15, 2020
Three young women in a rural Minnesota town navigate a pivotal summer under the watchful eye of a spirit with intimate ties to the land. Midwife Carna and her daughter, Poppy, live with Carna's Unitarian minister sister, Violet, and her daughters, Daisy and Lilah. The younger cousins love Poppy as a sister. Jane, a long-ago Irish immigrant whose spirit watches over the girls, thinks of them in the "colors of horses." Poppy is a "golden palomino, prancing, arrogant." Lilah, the second oldest, is a "flossy white unicorn, shimmering in her slightness," and Daisy, the youngest, a girl who feels most at home among nature, is a "cautious dark bay whose eyes are always watching." Jane, who narrates, focuses largely on 15-year-old Daisy, who dreams of Jane. After all, Jane was only 15 herself when she lost her sister, Bess, while aboard a ship to America. She married Bess' intended, who couldn't truly love her as a wife, and fell wildly, disastrously in love with Patrick, a stable hand in her husband's employ. Emphasis is placed on the parallels between Jane's life and the lives of the Whitsun girls: the complexities and joys of love and sex, unplanned pregnancies, mental illness, and the trials that women and girls often endure at the expense of their minds and bodies. All characters are assumed white. A lush and beautifully written treat for readers of historical and contemporary fiction alike. (historical sources) (Fiction. 14-18)

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July 1, 2020
Grades 9-12 Left to fend for herself in a loveless arranged marriage after she loses her sister and becomes pregnant by another man, Jane Murphy looks over the Whitsun girls as a ghost decades later. The three modern girls (Daisy, Poppy, and Lilah) have trials of their own: a first sexual relationship, an attempt to hold the family together, and an unplanned pregnancy. Told with lyrical prose, Mesrobian's (Just a Girl, 2017) latest outing makes for a mature YA novel reminiscent of Julie Berry's All the Truth That's in Me (2013) and Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic (1995). With touches of magic and a firm hold on the details that make reality real, this balances a historical story alongside something decidedly of today's era, while making both feel timeless. Mesrobian writes with a sense of comfort and immediacy, drawing the reader into the girls' stories in a novel that will no doubt be of high interest for young adult readers seeking additional depth in their reading material. Recommended for fans of Nova Ren Suma and Christina Meldrum.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

October 9, 2020

Gr 8 Up-Mesrobian's take on abortion and teen sex is deft and straightforward. The setting is Minnesota, where teens today need parental consent for a legal abortion. Blonde 19-year-old Poppy has a different idea when her younger cousin Lilah, also blonde, gets pregnant: Poppy sets about performing an ME, or menstrual extraction, herself. As the cramping that will lead to a miscarriage begins and ends over the next 48 hours, Poppy never leaves Lilah's side, ignoring Lilah's dark-haired little sister Daisy. Fifteen-year-old Daisy wanders off to the hayloft of an old barn they played in as kids. There she runs into Hugh, a childhood friend who's now 19 and also Poppy's ex, and their sexual encounter-which Daisy's not sure she wants-makes her feel like "an understudy for a real girl." Later, Daisy learns more about what pleasures her in an explicit shower scene with Hugh, though Hugh is still in charge and shuts down their brief tryst. Although the plot wobbles sometimes from its own weight, Mesrobian intersperses, in alternate chapters, the sympathetic voice of Jane, a 19th-century Whitsun foremother. From the grave, Jane recalls a love affair and stories of babies born and unborn, without conferring judgment. VERDICT Abortion and explicit sex are handled responsibly in this charged novel of risky behavior, friendship, and family history.-Georgia Christgau, LaGuardia Community Coll., Long Island City, NY

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