Willa's New World

August 24, 2000
Gr 7-9-When Willa's great-uncle ships the orphaned 15-year-old from London to Hudson's Bay in 1795, she uses her wits and brains to get a job clerking at the York Factory. Once there, she is befriended by Amelia, a Native girl who left her family to work for and learn about the white settlers; she teaches Willa about life both inside and outside of the fort. After Willa accepts a temporary transfer to a fort deeper in the wilderness, she travels to her assignment with Amelia's mother, brother, and cousin, and in the process learns about the culture, beliefs, and teachings of the First Peoples. While the opening chapters strain credulity and patience, the plot comes together once the teen arrives at the fort. The scenes in which Amelia explains her people's foods and customs are fascinating, and Demers builds the conflicts among her characters convincingly. However, some of these characters, such as Master George, the head of the trading post, are not sufficiently developed. Things move at a quiet pace in this eventful but gentle novel. It will take a dedicated reader to forge into Willa's New World, but that reader will find the journey worth it in the end.-Lisa Prolman, Greenfield Public Library, MA

Copyright 2000 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2000
Gr. 5-8. A long wilderness journey puts an orphan on the road to independence in this absorbing debut, set in Canada around the turn of the nineteenth century. With her father and family dead, 15-year-old Willa becomes the ward of her grand-uncle, who quickly washes his hands of her, bribing a ship's captain to transport her to a trading post on Hudson's Bay. Cast rudely ashore, she escapes the clutches of Dyer, the post's brutal surgeon, and finds a friend in Misiwapos, a Native American cook who has taken the name Amelia. As the first strong, self-reliant woman she has ever met, Amelia is a revelation to Willa, even more so after she reveals that she's been sent by her people to spy on the Europeans. Willa's re-education continues under Amelia's mother, Moon, an itinerant healer. Eventually, Willa learns to live in harmony with nature, and when the news comes that Dyer has beaten Amelia into a coma, Willa takes a spirit journey to her friend's bedside. Nearly all danger and violence are either off stage or allusive, but Demers romanticizes history, contrasting the noble natives and dirty, savage British with simplistic sharpness. It's Willa's painful sense of being cast utterly adrift that will have readers following her journey of self discovery with great interest. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)