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Summary
Summary
It has been eight years since Hope's mom died in a car accident. Eight years of shuffling from foster home to foster home. Eight years of trying to hold on to the memories that tether her to her mother. Now Sarah, Hope's newest foster mom, has taken her from Minneapolis to spend the summer on the Nebraska farm where Sarah grew up. Hope is set adrift, anchored only by her ever-present and memory-heavy backpack. Accustomed to the clamor of city life, Hope is at first unsettled by the silence that descends over the farm each night. But listening deeply, she begins to hear the quiet: the crickets' chirp, the windsong, the steady in and out of her own breath. Soon the silence is replaced by voices, like echoes sounding across time -- the voices of girls who inhabited the old farmhouse before her. Reluctantly, Hope begins to stretch down roots in the earth and accept this new family as her own.
Author Notes
Dianne E. Gray's first novel for young people, Holding Up the Earth, won a Willa Literary Award and was selected for the American Library Association's list of Best Books for Young Adults 2001. She grew up on the Nebraska prairie and now makes her home in the Mississippi River town of Winona, Minnesota.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Narratives, diaries and letters woven together, often too tidily, tell the stories of four girls from different generations who each find a way to reclaim their lives on a small Nebraska farm. Hope, whose mother died eight years earlier, is 14 when her latest foster mother, Sarah, brings her to the farmDthe site of "earth finds." These archeological treasures, such as barrettes and gold coins, become touchstones for each girl's experience and for Hope's ultimate sense of belonging. Abigail, the daughter of a 19th-century homesteading family unable to meet the demands of the frontier, returns to her prized meadow to die. Rebecca, a hired girl on the farm at the turn of the 20th century, eventually helps to heal the family she works for and marries the son. Her daughter, Anna (Sarah's mother), still runs the farm, and she and Sarah welcome Hope. Unfortunately, Hope's character does not seem convincing; her struggles are too easily won. Some tying of threads across the girls' narratives is contrived, such as Anna's meeting with Abigail just before she dies and the creation of a "story quilt" at the end. However, the letters and diaries, while uneven, offer some of the more fluid passages here and may sustain readers' interest in this first novel. Ages 10-14. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Middle School) The stories of five teenaged girls-separated by decades, but joined by their love of a Nebraska farm-are pieced together like a patchwork quilt in this first novel. Hope, an artistic fourteen-year-old orphan, comes to Nebraska to spend the summer on the farm with her new foster mother, Sarah, and Sarah's mother, Anna. ""Isn't one dish in my cupboards, one box up in the attic, one plowed field that doesn't have a story connected to it,"" says Anna, and Hope, whose own past is fragmented by loss and constant change, becomes fascinated by the history of the farm and those who have lived there. The past is revealed through a series of family documents that serve as a testament to the varied forms that history can take. A collection of yellowed letters written by Abigail Chapman in 1869 reveals the tragic story of the first family to homestead the land. Farm life at the turn of the twentieth century is described in a hired girl's tattered journal. Anna's experiences in 1936 are told directly to Hope; although this tale is one of the most moving, it unfortunately lacks the cadences of genuine speech and fails to convince as an oral narrative. Sarah's story, typed up in the early 1960s for an imagined future daughter, explains how she tried to prevent the government from installing a missile launch silo on nearby virgin prairie. Embedded within the overall framework of the novel, these first-person accounts are so memorable that the present-day segues between stories-which describe Hope's growing acceptance of her new family-often seem utilitarian. Nevertheless, it's a carefully structured work full of recurring connections and patterns, peopled with strong female characters. p.d.s. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Gr. 5^-8. After her mother's death and seven foster homes, 14-year-old Hope finds herself on the Nebraska farm where her current foster mother, Sarah, grew up and where Sarah's mother, Anna, still lives. In powerful stories, told in letters, diary entries, and an oral history, Hope gradually learns about the generations of women who have shared the land: Abigail, daughter of the first homesteader; Rebecca, a hired girl; Anna, Rebecca's daughter, who saves the farm during the Dust Bowl, and finally Sarah, who helps protest the missile silo erected in the farm's beloved meadow. Each woman's emotional story introduces heavy themes--mental illness, abuse, injustice, family betrayal--and in knitting together so many disparate elements, the plot occasionally feels contrived and the connections too coincidental. But the language soars in places, and readers will admire Hope's creativity, intelligence, and strength when she finally puts her mother to rest and charges forward with her life. A heartfelt first novel that can support both history and language arts curricula. --Gillian Engberg
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-Gray uses a contemporary character to frame stories of four generations of young teens who lived on a Nebraska farm. Hope, 14, is spending the summer at the childhood home of her latest and most-promising foster parent, Sarah. Sarah's mother, Anna, gives the teen some old letters written by Abby, a pioneer girl who describes the initial breaking of the earth around the homestead in 1869 and the wonder of the meadow beyond the soddy in which she lived. Next, Anna gives Hope her mother's journal, which tells how her stepfather sent her to work for the stern owner who bought the failing farm from Abby's father. Anna then tells Hope her own story, and, finally, Sarah's journal tells of the day the Air Force came to install a nuclear missile silo in the meadow. All of the memoirs are tied together poetically, with significant artifacts and details appearing in each, and the meadow figuring prominently in each woman's experience. While all the narratives are not equally compelling, many themes and symbols create a rich quilt of memories that helps Hope find a place to call home among the generations of women who have inhabited this farm.-Elizabeth A. Kaminetz, L. Douglas Wilder Middle School, Richmond, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Carrying her battered Garfield backpackwhich carries a small bag of her mothers ashes14-year-old Hope accompanies Sarah, her current in a long line of foster mothers, to Nebraska. Anna, Sarahs mother, runs her own farm there, and when she begins to tell Hope the stories of the remarkable women who have preserved the farmland and its accompanying meadow, Hopes distance toward her foster family gives way to curiosity. Although the women have much in common, first-time author Gray lets each one tell her own story using a blend of writing formats. Hope first explores letters written by Abigail, whose father staked the original claim; pores over Rebeccas diary, which records the girl adjusting to life as a servant for a German immigrant family; and listens to Anna recount an oral history of the Depression era. Finally, Hope comes to understand Sarah better after reading about Sarah and Annas fight to keep a missile silo from being placed in the meadow. In between learning about these past efforts, Hope forges her own identity and confronts her grief. After first believing that memories . . . couldnt be shared, Hope finds that the strength and history of women is a memory to be owned and shared by all women. While the experienced adult reader may find that the plot comes together too easily, young adolescents will overlook this minor flaw as descriptions of a soft, wet newborn calf and other memories of the farm entice the senses. An excellent candidate for mother/daughter book groups, Holding Up the Earth will become a collective memory for young teenage girls. (Fiction. 11-14)
