Nicole Lea HelgetBesprekingen

Reading age: 9 -- 12 years

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Readable but a somewhat dark memoir of growing up rurally in Minnesota. Both the parents are a bit disturbed or have a hard time coping with a hard life, so the family is dysfunctional. The author is the oldest in a family of 6 girls.

Fern lives with her stepdad Toivo and two little brothers; her baby brother and her mother were killed in a car accident. Toivo, a veteran, struggles to find and hold work (often through no fault of his own), and Fern's maternal grandpa wants custody of the children, but Fern wants to stay with Toivo and her brothers in the woods, where she often forages for berries, mushrooms, fiddleheads, and more. Fern has her mom's old recipe cards, which become the basis for her STEM project about food in the woods - the same woods that are in danger from a new fracking operation. Her two best friends, Mark-Richard and Alkomso, pair up to work on a "What Is Fracking?" project. Mark-Richard and his brother have recently been split up and put in different foster homes, and Fern knows that CPS is visiting her family soon as well - but caseworker Miss Tassel (actually Dr. Tassel) breaks the stereotypical social worker mold, listens to Fern, and stands up to Fern's grandpa. There is less resolution than in some middle grade books - there is a moratorium on fracking in Fern's woods, but it's still a possibility - and a dog does die, but life (in the form of puppies) goes on.

See also: Me and Marvin Gardens by Amy Sarig King

Quotes

"True learning comes from being open to wrong answers." (Mr. Flores, 13)

"Grandpa thinks he knows what's best for everyone without asking them." (25)

"I've seen corporations convince governments to do lots of crazy things." (Toivo, 91)

I don't know how he's making connections in his head. I've noticed that adults sometimes do this thing where they don't answer the question a kid has asked and instead start going on about something they're comfortable talking about instead. (94)

"Adults do all kinds of dumb things to handle problems." (Alkomso to Fern, 122)

It was easier when we agreed about everything.
But now I have to have my own mind. And she has to have her own mind. And somehow we have to figure out how to be a different kind of friend to each other. (180)

From Author's Note:

The struggles of Fern's family are ones I see often, which is why there's sometimes a rush to embrace any new industry promising employment, even when it is temporary, even when the downside is environmental destruction. (264)

We can't make informed decisions about food, water, or energy from a position of ignorance. (266)

Wow, there's a lot to unpack in this book -- in a good way, too -- sophisticated stuff presented in an accessible narrative. Good page space, nicely broken up by recipes, so it never bogs down. 11 year old girl, Fern, with a prematurely grey hair streak. In 6th grade, with 2 younger brothers and a stepfather. Her mom and the baby died in a car accident some time previous.

Her wealthy grandfather is trying to get custody of the kids from the stepfather. Stepfather, Toivo, is an Iraq vet who's coping, and who's struggling to find work. Supplements food sources by hunting. Fern learned a lot of foraging and cooking from her mom, so also brings in food that way. There is definitely a lot on Fern's shoulders -- a lot of child care, a lot of food prep and cleaning, but I think this is a perspective that many older kids in impoverished families would identify with.
Frakking has arrived in their community, and the book centers on the raging debate over whether the new jobs created outweigh the loss of wild spaces. This is well developed and presented for kids to think about -- Fern's Somali best friend comes down on opposite sides from her, and they still find ways to preserve their friendship and communicate.

As a counterpoint to the environmental relationships that are in flux, the book has diverse family relationships that are also shifting -- Fern and family, grieving for their lost mother and younger brother, torn between the money her grandfather has on hand and the ugly custody battle he's bringing. Fern's isolated neighbor, Millner, who owns the woods that are in danger and is the cause of her mother's death (fell asleep at the wheel), and also the owner of a pack of dogs that play a heavy role in the story. Fern's 2 best friends -- Mark Richard and his 2 siblings, taken into care when their house burns down and Alkomso, recent Somali immigrant, who's father is away looking for work and is relieved when he can return to take a frakking job. All of the kids have younger siblings, which adds another facet to their friendships. There's a mean girl club at school that periodically reappears, and have divorce as a unifying theme. The social worker who is in the middle of all of this is pretty kindly portrayed -- Fern wants nothing to do with her, but her influence helps solve some problems, and she turns into an unexpected ally.

On top of all of this, there's a STEM science fair competition coming up, their beloved science teacher is put on leave for protesting the frakking, and the new, fast moving trucks on Fern's road nearly kill her brothers. Heroic dog sacrifice happens instead. Grrrr. No more dead dogs, guys, that's not cool. Realistic, but not cool. Anyway, it's a lot. It's a surprisingly cohesive, quick moving read considering how much is going on. The characters are sympathetically portrayed, and it's a convincing encapsulation of daily life in a rural area where everyone's just trying to get by.

This book tackles many "adult" topics in a friendly way. Death, poverty, and environmental protection are all topics covered in this chapter-book about Fern. I would have this book in my library as a teacher. The character is very relatable to students who may have faced some events similar to Fern.

This story is about a German family in New Germany, Minnesota at the turn of the century. Wilhelm Richter marries a recent German immigrant, Magadelena who unbeknownst to him is carrying a child from a Jewish lover in Germany. Magadelena's sister, Frieda, marries a man who publishes the German newspaper in the town. But the story really centers on Wilhelm and Magadelena's children--Benjamin (the oldest and not Wilhelm's son), Herman, Luther, Otto, and the only daughter Liesel who was born with some kind of strange genital abnormity. After Magadelena's death, it is Liesel who keeps the family. Knowing that she is somehow different, she begins a strange sort of relationship with a neighbor man who appears to be mentally handicapped but who has also been raised in a horrible violent family. Lester catches turtles and brings them to Liesel - thus the title.

The story must bring up just about every kind of horror that a family could endure--violent births and deaths, abuse - both mental and physical. Hard German stoicism! The story takes Herman to WWI in Germany. One interesting point of the book was the resistance the German families had to their sons enlisting to fight against Germany.

There is some interesting background to the story and most of the characters are very believable - sometimes just a bit too much happens. Pretty good read.½

Fern is a strong willed 5th grade girl who has a lot of responsibility. She is very skilled and knows her away around the forrest by her home like the back of her hand. When her beloved forrest is at risk of disappearing, because of the new fracking company, she must stand her ground and be brave to save it.

Set in Stillwater, Minnesota Territory in the mid-19th century, Helget's novel presents a fascinating portrait of America's still-developing frontier in the years before statehood and the Civil War. Clement and Angel are fraternal twins, born in a Catholic orphanage to a girl escaping her trapper husband, an older man who bought her from her stepmother. Lydia has no intention of returning to Beaver Jean and his two Indian wives and leaves shortly after giving birth, hoping that the twins will find adoptive parents. Angel is adopted by the wealthiest family in town--a family whose newborn had recently died under questionable circumstances, but they refuse to take Clement, who appears to be weak and unhealthy. He will stay at the orphanage, raised by Big Waters, an Indian woman who works there. Clement has always felt that there is someone out there who silently communicates with him, and when he meets Angel, both seem to know immediately that they are separated twins. While it would appear that Angel has everything and Clement nothing, things are not always as they seem . . .

Helget brings a number of interesting characters attached to the story. There's Beaver Jean, who, despite his crude nature, seems to truly love his Lydia and sets out to find her and what he assumes is his son. Mother St. John, the youngish nun-out-of-habit who runs the orphanage/infirmary. Big Waters, who devotes her life to the sickly Clement. Little Davis Christmas and his mother, a runaway slave who is trying to get to Canada via the Underground Railroad. Beaver Jean's Indian wives, jealous of Lydia, practical, and devoted to the man who has taken them in. Father Paul, the local priest, who helps to move runaway slaves.

The story takes place over about 30 years, through the Civil War period and beyond. In the course of time, these characters meet and interact, often in very unexpected and sometimes tragic ways. I really enjoyed Helget's unique plot and engaging characters as well as her vivid, sensitive writing. I had never heard of this author before, but Stillwater is the only book that has made my "Best of 2020" list so far, easily surpassing two highly acclaimed recent novels (The Stationery Shop and Africaville) and one by a well-known author (Leila Aboulela).

Audiobook version. Preteen Fern is a worrier, lives in rural MI with her stepfather after her mother's death by accident, spends most of her free time babysitting her young bratty brothers and foraging in her neighbors old growth forest for food for their table. We hear how one friend has his home burned down & is sent off to a foster home, all of which is irrelevant to the story except for showing how awful the local families are. Her only school friend is an Iraqi girl, so we hear a bit about a different cultural approach to childrearing. Her stepfather has PTSD but apparently isn't receiving any disability benefits since they are constantly being dunned by creditors. Yet when push comes to shove he has no problem getting & holding a steady job at the end which allows him to buy real groceries for a change. One good theme is Fern's acceptance of the bachelor neighbor's suffering over being the cause of her mother's auto accident.
I wish I could say I liked this tale of a girl defending a local natural area from fracking, but too much of the story was unrealistic or just plain false. You don't get an immediate painful blister from touching poison ivy...it sounds like Helget confused wood nettles with poison ivy. Although the season is pretty undefined, there is snow on the ground so any jewelweed (the mentioned antidote to poison ivy) would be dead--yet Fern is able to squeeze a juicy stem to treat someone's painful ivy blister.½

A sensitive portrayal of both sides of jobs vs. environment and of impoverishment. One of the best characters is a social worker who was raised in poverty, understands the fears, yet feels the better for knowing how to survive, and passing that onto others. She tells young Fern to never be ashamed of being poor; you are helping your family survive while being strong in yourself. Includes recipes made with wild foods and an Author's Note.

Hallelujah Wonder is not just a Mary Sue, she is a condescending know-it-all. The book itself is written in such a way that the reader gets the feeling that the author thinks her readers are idiots. Most of the supporting characters are mere sketches, rather than fully-formed. At a time of more attention being paid to the diversity of characters in books for younger readers, it's a especially unfortunate that the characters of color are all relegated to supporting roles and have little or no agency of their own. All of this is a shame because the adventure of the plot and the characters of Eustace and Nova are compelling enough that I could see the potential for a really good middle-grade novel buried under the shortcomings. I wish the editor of this book had helped Ms. Helget correct some of these flaws, because I would have loved to read the novel this could have been.

In an author's note she indicates that a few years back she and a friend were talking about the need for a young persons' book with a strong female protagonist. Apparently she is out of touch with what is available today or doesn't remember the two literary Alices, Nancy Drew, etc. That said, this book should be popular with the young audience intended. The plot involves Hallelujah Wonder taking a shrunken head with magical powers that her explorer had obtained in his world travels from her home in Kansas to Antarctica (Don't ask me why). There is the obligatory villain trying to steal it away from her. Although the plot is preposterous the book moves along swiftly and I think the ten to twelve year old girl audience will enjoy it.

I didn't even look at the praise on the back of the book when I took it from library's new book section. I just saw "New Germany, Minnesota, 1920" on the first chapter page.

I was thinking if it would help to understand Rosalie in Twilight saga, for her background study. She was born in 1920s, and metamorphosed in mid 1930s. I thought it is a good side reading material.

As soon as I was into this book, I found that the main character girl was born 1900. It comes to not to Rosalie, but Edward.

Now I could see why Edward was desperate to go to great war, feeling left out because he was not old enough to enlist. Government made a great propaganda against Germany, forced to enlist young people, made a good deal at the people who were not enlisted or support the war; all those things were not mentioned in Twilight saga --- of course, it's not categorized to realistic/historical fiction with immigrants. Anyway, it was good to know Edward's background.

It also touched me in the way "Futatu no Sokoku" by Toyoko Yamazaki did. With immigrant parents and American born children, two of their most important countries fighting against each other, people stands separately with pros and cons, government involvements and distrust them afterwards of those who suffered, those were same contexts of those two stories. It secretly asking readers if this country is truly a free country, with trustable government, censorship free society: what can you see?

It left me deep sorrow on the bottom of my heart. Those who could put only two stars or less on this book, are either people with no heart, or lacking their imagination. Or maybe extremely lucky bunch without any catastrophe in the past family history.

I strongly recomend this book not because the story is good, but from American Studies points of view. Not just immigrants, but also women studies, it is good for a side reading material. I can't imagine how many unwed mothers having children and hardly getting help from religious people around them. It must be a lot harder than we can imagine nowadays. And pro-choice was not legal back then.

By the way, I believe the auther is one of Benjamin's decendants.½

Stillwater is Nicole Helget's latest book.

The first few chapters of Stillwater are seemingly the end of the book. We know what has happened, but was the path and story that led here?

Helget quickly immerses us into her tale, set in the frontier town of Stillwater Minnesota and spanning thirty years from 1840-1870.

A runaway wife makes her way to the local orphanage and gives birth to a pair of twins - boy and girl. The girl is adopted by a local wealthy family and lives a much different life than her brother who is raised at the orphanage.

That's the bare bones outline, but Helget's book is so much bigger. She deftly explores the connection between siblings, the need to belong and mothering from many different views. From the mother who walks away from the twins, from the daughter who is only a possession and tool for her mother, from the shunned Indian wife, from the nun who runs the orphanage, from the runaway slave who is desperate to save her son and more. She also uses the tundra swans of Minnesota metaphorically to great effect.

These themes are set within a fascinating historical narrative, covering the early days of settlement, the underground railroad, the Civil War and the inexorable path of progress. Helget's descriptions of time and place are excellent and provided me with vivid mental pictures as I read. Helget is a resident of Minnesota and that personal connection shows.

The characters are unique and unusual. Their actions often don't follow a straight line and their reactions are not always what we would expect. Some serve as background while others are more fully fleshed out.

I love old photographs and often wonder about the lives of those pictured. Stillwater reminded me of that - bits and pieces of history wound through with lives that might have been.

All of this is accomplished with absolutely wonderful prose. Helget is a born storyteller - I was entranced from first page to last

I love historical fiction and, while I love a good European fiction novel as much as the next fan, there's something just.. special about reading American historical fiction. So when I picked up Stillwater, as intrigued as I was about the twin angle, I was even more so excited about the historical angle - the underground railroad, the becoming of Minnesota as a state (a setting for a story I hadn't come across yet), you get the idea. And while I was interested by the story, it just seemed as if there was something off - something that took away from my pure enjoyment. After giving it some thought, I think I've finally figured out what that off-putting thing is.

Read the rest of this review at The Lost Entwife on Feb. 19, 2014.

This is a book about a couple of pretty unlikable characters. They do learn and grow, just not as much as I would have preferred. I had hoped for the peripheral characters to be more fleshed out. I did like their use of Horse Camp as a new adjective for something that is not at all as it was advertised. The book did leave me wishing to know where do they go from here. Is there a sequel in the works?

I received a copy of this book for review from the publisher. I was excited to read it, because, if you know me at all, you know that I love me some gut-wrenchers, and this book seemed to have all the makings of one.

The first part of this book, which is only 26 pages, starts the book off in horrifying and tragic fashion. Even for someone like me who loves books that push me to see the ugliness and unfairness and atrocities of life, I read this part with wide, unbelieving eyes. This part of the book made me anxious and a little hesitant to read the rest of the story, which is unusual, to say the least. I thought, if this is how it starts, do I want to know where it's going to go? But I'm no coward, so I read on, and in some ways I was rewarded, and in others I was a little disappointed. This is a book that is hard for me to quantify, honestly. It's a story about life and loyalty, and the way that things don't always go the way that they should, or the way that we want them to go, but we go on anyway.

The story technically starts with the second part, which takes us back to 1897 Germany, to the story of how Magdalena Schultz, newly-pregnant at 16 and unable to marry the father of her baby, travels to America with her sister Frieda to find a new life and a new husband. She finds both, but they aren't exactly what she expected. Frieda snags Archie Richter, who runs the local German newspaper, as her own husband, and arranges the marriage of Maggie and Wilhelm Richter, Archie's brother, who is nearly 40, and a farmer, and a bit brutish, in Maggie's estimation. He isn't abusive, but he isn't overly empathetic either. So the Richter family begins, and the story takes us through babies (five of them), deaths, war, tests of loyalty and accusations of treason, and unexpected friendship and connection.

This comes from Liesel Richter, who befriends the mentally disabled son of her neighbor, mean-spirited, angry and vindictive Harald Sutter, a man who holds a personal grudge against the more successful Wilhelm Richter. Harald causes a lot of trouble in Wilhelm's life, using the war against Germany as an outlet, and pretty soon, things take a sharp turn from Troublesome Road onto Too Far Lane. Leisel, left alone to care for her family after her mother's death, finds companionship and acceptance in Lester, who routinely brings her turtles for food as gifts. Only when Leisel allows Lester access to her most closely guarded secret, thinking that he wouldn't understand that she was different from other girls, things go badly, and Leisel makes an irrevocable decision, both for Lester and herself.

This isn't a happy story. It's one of struggle and hardships (the emotional kind, not the monetary kind), and uncertainty. It's a story of learning who you are and that sometimes it's not enough to just do what you think is the right thing. Sometimes the world turns its back anyway. Which brings me to the one thing that felt incomplete in this story. Frieda and her husband were accused of treason for printing their German paper with stories from both sides of the Great War, which included showing that there were victims on both sides - a direct contradiction to the Official Story demonizing Germans as heathens and killers, etc. (Times haven't changed much since...) Frieda is arrested, and her husband is subjected to public humiliation, and while the rest of the story plays out, nothing is ever resolved with Frieda - was she released? Was she imprisoned forever? Did she decide that she would make a better martyr than prisoner?

There was a tiny touch of magical realism in the story, which both fit and seemed a little out of place in a story so steeped in the everyday ordinary world we all live in... but I felt that the ending was fitting to the story.

Overall, I can't say that I truly enjoyed the story - but it isn't that kind of story. It has a different purpose, and a different goal. It's the kind of story that one reads to try to understand people different from us, not be entertained. If you're interested in those kind of books, this one may be for you.

This book is read though the eyes of Percy and Penny. The twins take turns tell you about their lives and about their family and trouble though their eyes. They are staying with their Uncle Stretch for the summer, for their mother is sent to jail.

They are trying adjust to all the changes that are happening to their family. Percy and Penny and their little brother Pauly are sent to live with their uncle until their mom and dad try to work things out. Percy and Penny are living with an uncle they do not know.

Penny writes in her diary and to her mom and dad though out the book. She also writing to someone in Africa that she is sponsoring. Percy tell his story though first person and describes it as a book read it. It make sent though this point a view. As for Penny is always writing in diary or writing a letter to family member. You can see the the twins moods and see the changes though the book.

I really can not tell that plot of this story is? All I could get out the story is that the twins were trying to adjust a new life and new family members or people. I only could get is that it was being read though the twins perceptive or though there eyes. You can make your own decision.

From the title and cover, this book seems like it should be a simple farm life memoir, but it is much more complex than that. Throughout the work, Helget recounts terrifying experiences with her father's temper, such as killing a cow with a pitchfork, and her mother's instability, such as demanding thirteen puppies be drown. The tone is bleak, but appropriate. She also weaves family and local stories into her own, providing a break from her own immediate family dynamics and some humor, as in the case of the story of the old bootlegger, Moonshine. On top of that, her prose is beautifully crafted, deftly conveying emotion and presenting a solid setting. Some readers may have trouble following her non-linear narrative, while others will feel this adds to the work. Highly recommended for all collections.

Very literary, but not very interesting.

The Turtle Catcher follows the Richter family in New Germany, Minnesota, from the late 19th century to 1920. The novel begins with a terrible event--in 1920 the three Richter brothers drown their handicapped neighbor, Lester, after they believe he has violated their sister, Liesel. The rest of the novel is a flashback--from the mother of the boys, Magdalena, leaving Germany as a young unwed pregnant woman, to her eventual birthing and raising of five children, including the one who eventually kills her, the coming of age of those children in the early years of World War I, and the eventual tragedies of the Great War that rip the family, and the town of New Germany apart. Throughout the novel, Liesel conceals what she believes is a terrible secret--she's a hermaphrodite--and she convinces herself that Lester, handicapped from his father's relentless beatings--is the only man who could ever love her. As the events surrounding Lester's death come to the surface, the reader discovers the demons of the Richter family and their small town.

Although the story in The Turtle Catcher was rich--I enjoyed all of its detail, its complicated levels--the execution and writing style of the novel really killed the story for me. There were times where the language was so dense, and the story so convoluted, that I was ready to give up on this book--something that I almost never do. This book had a lot of potential, and I do think it did a good job of capturing farm life in rural Minnesota at the turn of the century, as well as the political conflict between the German immigrants in the town and the other residents.

If I could give half stars, this would really be a two and a half star review, because the book did have some good things going for it. But I don't know if I would recommend this unless someone was really interested in America before/during WWI or in turn of the century life in the Midwest.½

Nicole Helget's The Turtle Catcher is a fascinating debut novel. I was hooked after the first few pages and could not put this book down until I finished it later the same night. The novel reads like a piece of true-to-life historical fiction. The story quickly enfolded me in a strange new world: in the immigrant German-American farming community of New Germany, Minnesota in the years around World War I. I learned that ethnic mistrust, intolerance, and hatred was something that German-American families had to deal with during this period—that the European battlefield saw its counterpart played out in violent ethnic strife in America's heartland.

The story is a compelling mystery. The book opens with the brief telling of a bizarre and horrendous series of events occurring over the course of a few hours in New Germany, Minnesota in 1920. There is a forced drowning of a mentally retarded man at the hands of three brothers. This causes the sister of the murderers to commit a bizarre act of self-mutilation. Finally, the tale of this horrendous day ends with the drowned man realizing that he is still alive. How can a reader not be hooked after an opening like that?

Naturally, most of the book is back-story. The book's main character is the sister, but a great deal of time is spent telling the life stories of her brothers, mother, father, and other significant people who populate this town and have a major role to play in the events of that fateful day on the banks of Spider Lake.

I assume that most readers will love this book for its unconventional and compelling story. But I am the type of reader who also needs a book to be exquisitely well-written, and this one was not. Helget's prose is clear and easy to read. There were some moments of intense beauty that heighten the reading experience, but for me, unfortunately, I found more passages that stood out awkwardly, distracting me from the content and focusing my attention on what I found objectionable in the prose. This doesn't happen often for me in the books that I read, so either my expectations are growing more pronounced or this author truly lacked something that I cannot distinctly point my finger toward.

In any case, I do heartily recommend this book for its brilliant story and fascinating characters. Reading this book widened my perspective concerning the treatment of German-Americans during World War I, provided me with hours of enjoyment, and left me with lingering thoughts about many of the characters portrayed in the book.

Advance copy.