BLUESTEM

It’s likely that only the most die-hard fans of the Little House books will appreciate this novel, set on the midwestern prairie in the 1870s. First-time novelist Arrington tells the story of resourceful 11-year-old Polly and her 9-year-old sister, Jessie, daughters of Swedish-immigrant homesteaders. The girls’ mother falls into a near-catatonic state at the beginning of the tale, and ultimately, horrified and powerless to stop her, her daughters watch her walk out of their lives. It soon becomes apparent that she has had a delayed reaction to the deaths of her two infant sons in the recent past and is no longer able to cope with her difficult and lonely life. Meanwhile, before the story began, the girls’ father had gone off to bury his deceased brother and, having broken his leg, has been unable to return home. Polly and Jessie manage on their own while fending off grasping neighbors. Despite the girls getting lost at one point in the high, wild grasses, the bluestems that surround their home and define their lives, there is little adventure here and the sisters’ experiences are surprisingly uninvolving as they wait and wait for Papa to come back. Young readers will likely be impressed by how much responsibility the children easily assumed in the “olden days,” but this novel is too bland to arouse much interest otherwise. (Fiction. 10-12)