THE ROOT CELLAR

by Janet Lunn ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 16, 1983

Time-travel with an unusual, Canadian-American dimension, some sturdy adventures and strong feelings--but also with a flimsy, highly contrived start-up and mostly flash-card characters. Rose Larkin, ""a stiff, self-possessed"" twelve-year-old raised in hotels by her ""austere,"" world-traveling businesswoman grandmother, finds herself, after her grandmother's sudden death, at Hawthorn Bay on an island off the Canadian shore of Lake Ontario: she's to live with the unknown, messy, rambunctious Henrys--Aunt Nan (sister of her long-dead father), Uncle Bob, big cousins George (15) and Sam (14), and six-year-old twins Jimmy and Brian. Even before she meets them, Rose is appalled by the ramshackle old house they've recently moved into. She's further disconcerted by two inexplicable personages: tiny, ancient Mrs. Morrisay, who seems to know Rose (""I see you come back""), and a girl glimpsed tidying an old-fashioned room that's ordinarily the twins'. For Rose, unaccustomed to everyday give-and-take, nothing in fact goes well--and she gladly passes through Aunt Nan's root cellar into the Civil War period of Mrs. Morrisay, hired girl Susan, and Susan's (previously unseen) friend Will. . . whose decision to join Abe Lincoln's army (historically, like other Ontarians) sets in train the book's second, far superior sequence of developments. Mettlesome Rose will have good use for her independent upbringing; she'll lose--and regain--Susan's friendship; the two will travel picaresquely to New York and Washington in search of the injured Will. And, in a wrenching flare-up, the slightly older, much more mature Rose works out her problems with the Henrys--with whom she's decided she really belongs. Once underway, Lunn (Twin Spell, 1969) writes with vitality and color and a sense of the passing moment, even if her people never quite transcend their types.

Pub Date: May 16, 1983

ISBN: 0140380361

Page Count: -

Publisher: Scribners

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1983

Categories: FICTION