The novel opens slowly, with Mary, in her direct and intelligent first-person present-tense narration, setting the scene (as well as gradually revealing her agonizing guilt over her role in George’s accident). But what causes not a drop of tension is the fact that a significant percent of the English population, including Mary, is Deaf, with many families having both hearing and Deaf members, so everyone is adept at sign language and no stigma is attached to deafness. In the larger picture, English-settler residents (Mary’s family among them) and the Wampanoag are on opposite sides of a land dispute, causing strife and division. In 1805 Chilmark, on Martha’s Vineyard, eleven-year-old Mary Lambert’s family is grieving the death of her brother George in a horse-cart accident. Intermediate, Middle School Scholastic 288 pp.
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