The Freedom Maze

October 1, 2011
It's 1960, but on the decayed Fairchild sugar plantation in rural Louisiana, vestiges of a grimmer past remain--the old cottage, overgrown garden maze, relations between white and black races. Stuck for the summer in the family ancestral home under the thumb of her cranky, imperious grandmother, Sophie, 13, makes a reckless wish that lands her in 1860, enslaved--by her own ancestors. Sophie's fair skin and marked resemblance to the Fairchilds earn her "easy" employment in the big house and the resentment of her peers, whose loyalty she'll need to survive. Plantation life for whites and blacks unfolds in compelling, often excruciating detail. A departure from Sherman's light fantasy Changeling (2006), this is a powerfully unsettling, intertextual take on historical time-travel fantasy, especially Edward Eager's Time Garden (1958), in which white children help a grateful enslaved family to freedom. Sophie's problems aren't that easily resolved: While acknowledging their shared kinship, her white ancestors refuse to see her as equally human. The framing of Sophie's adventures within 1960 social realities prompts readers to consider what has changed since 1860, what has not--for Sophie and for readers half a century later--and at what cost. Multilayered, compassionate and thought-provoking, a timely read on the sesquicentennial of America's Civil War. (Historical fantasy. 12 & up)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 1, 2012
It's 1960, and thirteen-year-old Sophie Martineau has just been deposited by her imperious, newly divorced mother at their ancestral home in the Louisiana bayou, once the site of a grand sugar plantation, to spend the summer with her spinster aunt and bedridden grandmother. She soon gets lost in the estate's overgrown maze, meets a Creature that is equal parts Psammead and Brer Rabbit, and is transported back in time one hundred years. With her summer tan, Sophie is mistaken for a slave but granted a favored position in the Big House. As she experiences the moral injustices of slavery, however, she falls out of favor and is reassigned to the quarters. After she has played a dangerous but critical role in the novel's climax, the Creature whisks her back to 1960, where she must research the end of the story. In doing so, she finds the courage to defy her own mother and reconnect with her father. The story is quite ambitious: not only does Sherman pay homage to classic fantasy tropes, she vividly evokes two historical settings, turning a glaring light on the uncomfortable attitudes and practices of earlier eras. While Sherman has Sophie solving too many of the slaves' problems (the white savior motif), her coming of age nevertheless resonates with moral outrage and righteous indignation. jonathan hunt

(Copyright 2012 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

January 1, 2012
Its 1960, and thirteen-year-old Sophie is spending the summer at her grandmothers Louisiana bayou home. After meeting a mysterious creature, shes transported back in time one hundred years and (with her summer tan) mistaken for a slave. Sophies coming of age resonates with moral outrage and righteous indignation. Sherman pays homage to classic fantasy tropes while vividly evoking two historical settings.

(Copyright 2012 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)