Mary Mehan Awake

By: Jennifer Armstrong

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Synopsis: In a compelling sequel to the highly praised "The Dreams of Mairhe Mehan", Mairhe, who has now taken the name Mary, leaves Washington, D.C., to take a position as a domestic servant in upstate New York. The Civil War has ended. Mary's brother, Mike, has been killed at Gettysburg, her father has returned home to Ireland, and, after two years of nursing wounded and dying soldiers in the capital's hospitals, Mary is emotionally exhausted and physically defeated. But in her new life on the shores of Lake Ontario, Mary finds renewal and her senses gradually re-awaken. Each of the novel's five sections focuses on a different sense -- as Mary learns to assist explorer and naturalist Jasper Dorsett in photographing birds, she begins to see things with a photographer's eye; as she falls in love with Dorsett's stable hand, a veteran left deaf by the war, she learns to describe the sounds she hears for him; and so forth, through the renewal of smell, taste, and touch. This challenging and poetic young adult novel concludes Mary's story with a mixture of sparkling language, thematic richness, and emotional depth.

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