Donnelly, Jennifer. A northern
light.
Fic D718n
In 1906, Chester Gillette murdered his pregnant girlfriend, Grace Brown, by drowning her in Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks. This sad, bare bones of a story has been told again and again, and it is told this time by Mattie Gokey—a hardworking girl with dreams (well beyond either her means or her family’s status) of going to Barnard College in New York City. She is a maid at the Glenmore resort, where Chester and Grace are staying, and where Grace makes her last, pathetic attempts to get Chester to do right by her.
Mattie made promises--to her dead mother, and to poor, dead Grace. How, and whether she kept them, is crucial to Chester’s fate. This book won the Carnegie medal, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and is a Michael Printz Award Honor book.