Trouble's Child - Hardcover

Grade 6-10 Caught between her desire to go on to high school and pressure from her peers and elderly grandmother to stay on their small Louisiana island and accept its ways and life style, 15-year-old Martha must struggle with this excruciatingly painful decision. She finds it difficult to adopt the ways and rituals that rule the lives of the island's people. Her yearning to see more of the world is dismissed constantly by her grandmother, her only family, who has guided and trained her to follow in her footsteps as the island's midwife. Martha, who has delayed the island tradition whereby girls announce their readiness to marry, knowing that by going through with it she'd be forsaking her longings for knowledge and adventure, eventually shows the strength to make the difficult decision. Walter immerses readers in Martha's internal struggle, holding their attention to the last page. The quickly paced text utilizes the native dialect, further adding to the aura of the isolated island setting as Walter shows how ritual and superstition dominate. The only noticeable weakness in the text is the lack of substantial development of the secondary characters. While Martha's particular problems are unique, adolescent readers will easily empathize with her predicament of feeling confused by the pull from so many different directions at this stage of life. Tom S. Hurlburt, Anoka County Library, Blaine, Minn.
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