Description
The Shiloh Renewal by Joan Leslie Woodruff
ISBN 978-0930773502
Two teenage girls, sisters a year apart, are in a terrible auto accident near where they live, a few miles from the Civil War battlefield at Shiloh. The older is killed outright. The younger is badly brain-damaged. In a coma, she meets people who are oddly dressed and who speak English but not quite the English she speaks. Eventually she comes out of the coma, but continues to see and talk with these people who are soon identified as doctors, nurses and soldiers–Northern and Southern–on their way to Shiloh to fight a great Civil War battle. The girl is befriending people of the last century who are soon to die. As fascinating as these occurrences are, they are associated with the girl’s refusal to accept the death of her sister. Indeed, her doctors expect the girl to die. But she fools everybody, and by witnessing the deaths of her Civil War friends she is able to come to terms with the death of her sister.
Based on a true story, this fine novel–appropriate for both adults and young adults aged 13 and over–presents death, loss and grief engrossingly and even hopefully.
Reviews
A brain-damaged teenager struggles to reconstruct herself and her shattered world in an electrifying first-person narrative. After an auto accident, Sandy awakens next to the gurney on which her sister Penny’s body rests. The nurses express surprise that she’s alive; the doctor holds out no hope either, and Sandy, after a brief stay in Intensive Care, is sent home to die. Against all odds, she hangs on; in the hallucinatory company of Penny, plus a series of Civil War soldiers converging on nearby Shiloh, Sandy slowly learns to walk and talk again, to find accommodations with her uncooperative, badly injured body, to reach through the constant pain and noise in her head. She describes her progress with unimpaired intelligence; in a measured, almost detached tone that will grip readers from the outset Sandy recounts victories and defeats in her battle against the “terrorists” and “mischievous voices, disobedient beasts and broken machines” in her brain. She notes external signs of her internal healing: Random jumbles of letters become understandable words again; she takes ever longer rambles about the farm; she refuses to take the strong tranquilizers the doctor has prescribed; and she accepts that Penny is gone. Woodruff fits Sandy with a distinct, individual voice, a past life of which, heartrendingly, she recalls only traces, and a strong supporting cast led by her sad, loving mother. A powerful, extraordinary story.
—From Kirkus Reviews , May 26, 1998
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