A Victorian ghost story set in a Cherokee girl’s school in the old west.
Willie is only seventeen, but passes herself off as older as she assumes the identity of one of her classmates. She takes the position offered to her friend as a teacher in a Cherokee school in the Oklahoma territory. The school is nothing like what she expected. The building is like a castle and the students are from the very elite of society. Strange things start to happen to her at the school. A student drowned in the river nearby, and she is assigned the room of that student. Nightly she hears tapping on her window. There is mystery, romance, and more in the book – a good read!
Review by Fay Mason, Churchill Jr. High School Media Center
Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5 stars)
Interest Level: Grades 7-10
The Revenant
Written by Sonia Gensler
Knopf Books for Young Readers
336 pages
Release Date: June 14, 2011
ISBN: 9780375867019
When Willie arrives in Indian Territory, she knows only one thing: no one can find out who she really is. To escape a home she doesn’t belong in anymore, she assumes the name of a former classmate and accepts a teaching job at the Cherokee Female Seminary.
Nothing prepares her for what she finds there. Her pupils are the daughters of the Cherokee elite—educated and more wealthy than she, and the school is cloaked in mystery. A student drowned in the river last year, and the girls whisper that she was killed by a jealous lover. Willie’s room is the very room the dead girl slept in. The students say her spirit haunts it.
Willie doesn’t believe in ghosts, but when strange things start happening at the school, she isn’t sure anymore. She’s also not sure what to make of a boy from the nearby boys’ school who has taken an interest in her—his past is cloaked in secrets. Soon, even she has to admit that the revenant may be trying to tell her something . . . — From the publisher
I’m really interested in this book! It sounds so different from the fantasy books that are always checked out in our library! We needed a new good mystery book! Can’t wait to read it! :)
I’ve got an extra copy of this book sitting on my desk here, I think I will send it over to Skyline High because it sounds like people are interested in having it there.
Thanks Josh!! Very Excited about this book!!
Excellent information! From what is presented here, I’m adding this to my “4 Valley” list.