Release date: May 15, 2008 | Age Range: 9 - 11 years | Series: Enola Holmes Mystery
Sherlock Holmes?s sister, Enola, is back on another case!
Enola Holmes is being hunted by the world?s most famous detective?her own brother, Sherlock Holmes. But while she is on the run in the world?s biggest, darkest, dirtiest city, she discovers a hidden cache of charcoal drawings and feels as if she is a soul mate to the girl who drew them. But that girl, Lady Cecily, has disappeared without a trace. Braving the midnight streets, Enola must unravel the clues to find this left-handed lady, but in order to save her, Enola risks revealing more than she should. Will she be able to keep her identity a secret and find Lady Cecily, or will the one thing she is trying to save?her freedom?be lost forever?
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"Conform, go crazy, or become an artist." I have a rubber stamp declaring those words, and they pretty much delineate my life. Conforming was the thing to do when I was raised, in the fifties. Even my mother, who spent her days painting animal portraits at an easel in the corner of the kitchen, tried to conform via housecleaning, bridge parties, and a new outfit every spring. My father, who was born into a British-mannered Protestant family in southern Ireland, emigrated to America as a young man and idolized the "melting pot" because at last he fit in. Once in a rare while he recited "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" or told a tale of a leprechaun, but most of the time he was an earnest naturalized American who expected exemplary behavior of his children. My mother was a charming Pollyanna who would not entertain negative sentiments in herself or anyone around her. As their only girl and the baby of the family, I was coddled, yet hardly ever got a chance to be other than excruciatingly good.
My "conform" phase lasted right into adulthood. When I was thirteen, my parents bought a small motel near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and I spent most of my teen years helping them make beds and clean rooms. I did not date until I went to college -- Gettysburg College, all of seven miles from home. it was the height of the sixties, and I grew my hair long, but eschewed pot, protests, and "happenings." Instead, I married a preacher's son who was himself conforming by studying for the ministry. Within a few years I was Rev. Springer's wife, complete with offspringers, living in a country parsonage in southern York County, PA.
Here beginneth the "go crazy" phase.
Because I had never been allowed any negative emotions, I began to hear "voices" in my head. First they whispered "divorce" (not permissible), and later they hissed "suicide". They scared me silly. I couldn't sleep; images of knives and torture floated in front of my eyes even during the daytime; something roared like an animal inside my ears; my wrists hurt; I saw blood seeping out of the walls; panic jolted me like a cattle goad out of nowhere. Is it necessary to add that I was clinically depressed? The doctor gave me Valium and sent me to a shrink. The shrink took me off the Valium and told me I had a problem with anger. (No duh.) The next doctor zombied me on the numbing antidepressants which were available at that time. The next shrink said I had an adjustment problem. And so on, for several years, during which I somehow managed to stay alive, take care of my kids, handle the vagaries of my husband, sew clothing and grow vegetables to get by financially, cook, can preserves, show up at church, do mounds of laundry and publish "The White Hart" and "The Silver Sun"--yet not one of the doctors of shrinks ever suggested that I might be a strong person, let alone a writer. All of them were intent on "helping" poor little me "adjust" to being a housewife, mother, and pastor's wife.
Eventually I became resigned to the fact (as I perceived it) that I was an evil, sinful person with horrible things going on inside my head, and I stopped trying to fix me. I stopped going to doctors or therapists. Somehow I found courage--or desperation--to stop trying to conform or adjust or live a role.
"I am going to start taking an hour or two first thing in the morning to do my writing," I said to my husband.
"Fine," he said. He had reached the point where he would agree with whatever to humor the neurotic wife; to him it was just another of my brain farts. But to me it was the most important sentence I ever spoke. With that statement I stopped being a housewife who sometimes stole time to write, and I started being a writer.
Conform, go crazy--or become an artist.
By becoming a writer--by becoming who I truly was--I became well.
It was so simple. Although it did take years, of course; it takes a long time for good things to grow. Trees. Books. Me. Odd thing about books; they not only nourish growth but show it happening. In "The Black Beast, The Golden Swan" and many other of my early novels, you can see me dealing with the yang/yin nature of good and evil, struggling to accept my own shadow. In "Chains of Gold" and "The Hex Witch of Seldom" I start writing as a woman, no longer identifying only with male main characters. In a number of children's books I come to terms with my own childhood. And in "Apocalypse"--whoa, what a fierce, dark fantasy novel, the first thing I wrote after my income from writing enabled my husband to leave the ministry. I hadn't thought of myself as repressed when I was a pastor's wife, but obviously something broke loose when I shed that role. "Larque on the Wing"--whoa again, another breakthrough book that spiraled straight out of my muddled middle-aged psyche and took me places I'd never dreamed were in me.
It's been a long time since those days when I thought I was an evil person. I know better now, and I love and trust me even to the extent of writing "Fair Peril"--a more perilous novel than I knew at the time, interfacing all too closely with my life. Written two years before the fact, it foresees my husband's infidelity and my divorce. The most painful irony I've ever faced is that once I gained my selfhood, I lost my lifelong partner. He had supported me through episodes that would have sent most men screaming and running, but once I became well and strong, he transferred his loyalty to a skinny, neurotic waif all to similar to the young woman I once was. After supporting him through twenty-seven years of stinky socks, automotive yearnings, miscellaneous foibles, and the career change that put him where she could cry on his shoulder, I found this a bit hard to take. But I wouldn't go back to being Ms. Pitiful. Not for anything.
Now married to a rather remarkable second husband, after living 46 years in Pennsylvania I moved in 2007 to the Florida panhandle, where I spent a year living in a small apartment above the aforementioned husband's hangar in an exceedingly rural (swamps, egrets, snakes and alligators) airport. Now we have a real house about a mile from the airport on higher ground featuring tremendously tall longleaf pine trees with rattlesnakes and scorpions underneath them. Life is an adventure and I mean that sincerely.
While written for young adults, the Enola Holmes books have a lot to recommend them for readers of any age. This is the second book in the series; I strongly recommend that you read "The Case of the Missing Marquess" first. Nancy Springer has created a smart, brave leading character, while still being true to the spirit of the Conan Doyle stories. When I heard about these books, I rolled my eyes at the idea of Sherlock holmes' younger sister. But Springer does a fine job of making the characters and relationships plausible. I'm looking forward to Book Three!
Enola Holmes is back in her second adventure, and this time she's in the heart of London. While she's prowling the dark streets and dangerous alleys of 19th century England, she's also being hunted by her brother Sherlock Holmes. Nancy Springer has created an excellent series for young readers as well as Holmes aficionados. Two other books have already been published since this one, and a fifth is waiting in the wings.
However, I can't help but grin just a little at the thought of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sitting down to read one of Springer's books. I wonder what his reaction would be. Everyone knows Doyle had a love/hate relationship with his most famous character because he wanted to write more historical (for the time) romances of knights and adventure. Unfortunately for him, but not for the world, Sherlock Holmes resisted even death and came back again and again.
In the medieval romances Doyle wanted to write, women still remained as objects of affection and were helpless to save themselves. That's not what Enola Holmes is all about. She is a plucky and self-sufficient heroine that today's youth will readily embrace. I can't help but wonder if Doyle would be less enthusiastic over Enola's relationship to his Great Detective and her contribution to the ongoing mythos, or to the fact she is female. Either way, Springer has delivered an original character and world steeped in history, social contradictions, and breakneck adventure.
Enola has successfully set herself up under another name as a secretary to a Perditorian (a finder of persons and things, quite similar to Sherlock Holmes). Interestingly enough, Enola becomes quite sympathetic about the disappearance of young Lady Cecily. This case is one of the few that Sherlock Holmes has turned down. Also interesting, the person that brings the case to Enola's attention is none other than Dr. John Watson. As everyone knows, Dr. Watson is Sherlock's constant companion and confidant.
I couldn't help feeling just a little bit anxious over Enola's meeting with Watson. Watson was never the observer and detective that Sherlock was and served more as a raconteur of the investigations, but he was no fool either. I kept waiting on the edge of my seat for Watson to point at our young heroine and yell, "A-ha! The game is afoot!"
Instead, he was there to hire her fictional employer to find herself. Sherlock is working himself into a state over his sister's disappearance. Enola becomes torn when she hears how much her brother is worried over her. I love the fact that Enola worries about her brothers even though she's not had much chance to be close to them. One of the things that Enola most wants is family. She never had much of a growing up because her brothers are so much older than she is. Then there's the matter of the mysterious disappearance of her mother, which first set her on the run from her brothers' efforts to put her in a young ladies school.
With that threat hanging over her head, she can't turn to Sherlock or Mycroft. Even Watson is off limits. Above family, she treasures her freedom and independence.
I have to admit to a little trouble with all the codes that passed back and forth in the book. I like cryptography, and Springer's seemed really cool, but it was so obtuse that I think younger readers might have trouble grasping it. I struggled with it myself. And it was real stretch to think that even Sherlock Holmes would have tumbled to the code.
The author excels dramatically during the action scenes set in London's darker and more dangerous corners. The attempted garroting in the book's earlier sections is breathtaking, no pun intended. I love the look and feel of Sherlock Holmes in Victorian London, and Springer kept me there with her young heroine throughout the novel.
The twists and turns of the plot, even the real identity of the criminal mastermind, threw me at times and seemed a little farfetched. However, Enola's latest adventure is a colorful romp that allows her to thumb her nose at the Great Detective's skills of observation and deduction. Even though I don't want to believe Sherlock could ever be fooled, if anyone could do it, it would be Enola Holmes.
These books are great additions for Sherlock Holmes fans, as well as for young minds interested in mysteries and historic settings filled with danger and action.
I really like the first book in this series so naturally I bought the second. I liked the first one better but this book was still worth the read. Like a previous reader stated, Enola is an interesting character who's fun to spend a couple of hours with. Some of the content is a bit mature of younger readers, and I wouldn't recommend it for sensitive children under the age of 12, but otherwise it's a good read.
