Amazon.com Review
"'This one is wise,' he said.' This one has an old spirit. She has been among us before.'" Though the Arapaho Indian on the trail praised her old spirit, 14-year-old Lizzy Enders feels anything but wise. Within only a few days, she has lost her mother to the fever, been left by her widowed father at a convent, and thrust into the strange world of the Academy of Our Lady of Light in 1870s Santa Fe. Born a Methodist, Lizzy just can't comprehend Catholicism: "All this talk of blood and martyrdom and eating flesh and agony. It was just all too much, is all." In an attempt to alleviate her misery, Lizzy befriends an unemployed elderly carpenter and suggests he be hired to build the missing staircase for the convent's new chapel. The other girls at the academy are furious, since they have been praying for a miracle to complete the stairs, not an old beggar. Can she convince them that this aged man, with his real tools, is better than an ephemeral miracle? What Lizzy has to discover for herself is that sometimes miracles come disguised in nun's habits... or carpenter's sandals.
Based on a legend of a real chapel stairway in Santa Fe, The Staircase is a lively historical fiction that successfully merges myth, religion, and old-fashioned pioneer sensibility. Lizzy's need to make order of her chaotic world and define the unknown are timeless teen traits, making The Staircase a historical novel with real relevance for today's adolescent. (Ages 12 and older) --Jennifer Hubert
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Rinaldi (The Coffin Quilt) delivers another winning historical novel, this time turning to New Mexico in the 1870s. After her mother dies on the Santa Fe Trail, 13-year-old Lizzy Enders is deposited by her father in a Santa Fe convent schoolAwithout even saying good-bye. Pragmatic Lizzy, who is Methodist, chafes at the hypocrisy and injustice she observes: "To have pride was a sin. Humility was everything, though all the girls preened and boasted and glowed when they got praise from the nuns." She is also baffled at the convent's conundrum: the nuns are praying to Saint Joseph for help finishing their newly constructed chapel, which lacks a staircase to the choir loft; Lizzy simply finds a carpenter, the disheveled vagrant Jose. "Saint Joseph will think we have no faith in him!" one of the girls angrily tells Lizzy. The dynamics among the girls seem reductive, especially the tense exchanges between Lizzy and the villainously manipulative Elinora, whose evil deeds include poking out Lizzy's kitten's eyes with an embroidery needle. Fortunately, the highly charged description of the Wild West town (and a subplot involving Jesse James) and Lizzy's relationships with the adult characters prove colorful and lively. An endnote explaining the enduring mystery of the chapel staircase will leave readers pleasantly intrigued. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
