The Blind Faith Hotel - Softcover

Pamela Todd was awarded the Green Earth Book Award  and the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award for The Blind Faith Hotel. She has also received grants from the Ragdale Foundation and a grant from the Illinois Arts Council to teach journal writing in a women’s prison. She lives outside of Chicago, Illinois, with her husband and their children, and is an avid prairie gardener. To learn more, visit her website at www.pamelatodd.com.

Grade 8–10—Zoe, 14, is used to moving, following her father's Alaskan fishing jobs or whatever work her mom can find. This coming move is different, though: her mother, sister, and brother are leaving the Northwest coast for the Midwestern prairie, and their father isn't coming with them. Amid construction on the ramshackle house that her mother has inherited, Zoe feels lost and angry, and blames her mom exclusively for the upheaval. After a minor shoplifting charge, she is sentenced to work for a gruff old man trying desperately to save the prairie he loves. The rippling grass is no substitute for the ocean she left behind, but from pulling out the invasive brush, she begins to understand what Hub says about everything needing space to grow. Gradually, grudgingly, she comes to terms with her new surroundings and finds her place in her family. Zoe's anger is realistic, but readers will lose sympathy for her when it turns to brattiness, and a subplot involving her falling for a boy feels extraneous. Conversations with adults are loaded with metaphors about love, loss, and starting over; they range from poignant to annoyingly forced. Still, though, the novel pushes all the right emotional buttons: family discord, cross-country moves, minor criminal activity, puberty, environmentalism, first love. Despite its flaws, this novel will find an audience with teen girls, particularly those dealing with one (or more) of Zoe's issues.—Brandy Danner, Wilmington Memorial Library, MA
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