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The Revenant Sonia Gensler 9780375867019 Books

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The Revenant Sonia Gensler 9780375867019 Books

A stolen identity, a runaway school girl, a budding romance, a suspicious death, and a restless spirit haunting a girls' school... what's not to love? Seventeen-year-old Willie assumes the identity of a recent graduate from her Tennessee academy and runs away to Indian Territory to become a teacher at the Cherokee Female Seminary in 1896 Tahlequah rather than leave school to go home and help her family. She expects to find quaint, ignorant young girls who need to learn the basics of the three R's, but her stereotypes are quickly disproved. Instead she finds she is to teach English to the upper-level girls, the daughters of the Cherokee elite. These girls are Willie's age and every bit as well-educated as Willie herself. Willie quickly realizes she is not prepared - she struggles to find engaging assignments and has no idea how to grade compositions - but she determines to make it work. At the same time Willie must cope with her students' and colleagues' belief that a vengeful ghost, the spirit of a former student who drowned in the nearby river the year before, haunts the school. Mysterious sounds in Willie's room and unexplainable events make even Willie question whether spirits really can haunt the living. All this coupled with Willie's strong attraction to a young man from the Cherokee boys' school add up to an intriguing tale.


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The Revenant Sonia Gensler 9780375867019 Books Reviews

I truly enjoyed this book. It is filled with rich detail and development of life in pre-statehood Indian territory, told engagingly through the themes that seem to transcend time. Jealousy, fear, anger, resentment, friendship, trust, longing, love, idealism--all exist within the story set around a boarding school for Indian girls.

The mystery at the center is tinged with the supernatural, adding an additional layer of interest to the story, and the class struggles deftly handled speak to those still (unfortunately) struggled with today.
I love to find new or relatively new authors that have well written material and keep my interest. Sonia Gensler is that type of author. I typically don't read historical fiction, but I could not put down The Revenant. The Revenant was recommended to me by my local librarian and I am so thankful that she did. I am hoping that Sonia continues a story line between 'Willie' and Eli. I would love to see the research of what Eli did once he finishes law school. Does he go back to the reservation? Does Willie experience any more ghosts now that she knows they exist? The Revenant is a good solid story with a great ending. I felt closure with this book, with the desire for more as well.
I have never reviewed a book written by a friend and colleague before. I taught with Sonia, and felt like I identified most deeply to Willie's struggles as a teacher. Those self-doubts will resonate with every teacher! But this book is so much more than a book about a teacher.

Willie comes alive from the first page when we discover she's a liar...she has run away from her family who wants her to leave school. She's swiped another girl's teaching certificate and has run away to Oklahoma...to the Cherokee Nation. She soon learns that the Cherokee, are indeed a Civilized Tribe. The Seminary she runs to is home to upwardly-mobile girls whose parents are rich, educated, and ever-so-slightly snobbish about their light skin color. The girls are prairie Mean Girls...especially Fannie. Since Willie is really younger than her students, she lets them intimidate her -- at first, until her friend Olivia takes her under her wing.

There's also a ghost story...the girl who used to live in Willie's room died under mysterious circumstances...was it an accident? Was it murder? Suicide? No one much wants to talk about it. But strange things happen at school...Willie hears tapping on her window, the girls often smell river water, the same river where Ella died. And rooms would suddenly go cold. Olivia believes there's a revenant at the school.

There's also a love story. Eli, oh Eli. They meet on the train, but they're both trapped by Willie's lies. She's younger than Eli, but he thinks she's a teacher, and she must pretend to be something she's not. Eli is charming...seems to be a ne'r-do-well, a failing student with no ambition.

The mystery unravels itself, just as Willie's lies unravel...I loved the way the ghost story resolves itself.

My only frustration is one I often feel with well-crafted YA novels...I wish it was a full-length adult novel. I could tell Sonia knew the entire back story of each character. Olivia, who introduces Willie to revenants, and ouija boards and grading rubics. Toomey, the stepfather who may not be as evil as Willie first believed. And Miss Crenshaw...oh, how I want to know HER story. So, for me, I want to know more about these characters. I want to watch them interact, to think, to dream. I wanted the story to have that time to develop...I wanted more.

One reviewer compared Sonia to Jennifer Donnelly, and I absolutely agree. Each of them has a sense of place and time that bring the story alive. They know how to craft intelligent, literate, interesting heroines we want to know.

I'm so proud of my friend, and I can't wait to hold MY OWN book in my hand and have her autograph it.

After I read it, I had several of my students read it and they loved it too...they loved the characters, the romance, and they wrote thank you notes to Sonia...this one is a winner!
I thoroughly enjoyed the story on a historical level, but as a ghost story it was average. The ghostly happenings didn't go overboard, so they certainly were believable, but I guessed who the bad guy was very early on.

I commend the author for writing about "Indians" in a non-stereotypical manner. Few people know the little slice of history that she chose, but the descriptions were rather generic. It could have been any female boarding school during the era. I never truly felt that it was a Cherokee boarding school. There were sprinklings here and there of "full bloods" vs. "mixed bloods", but besides Eli Sevenstar, none of the characters came across as Cherokee.

In one scene, Eli claimed the stereotypical portrayal of plains tribes did not represent the Cherokee. I was pleased to see it, yet I never got any sense of the true heart of the Cherokee. The setting was about 60 years after the Trail of Tears, but the only mention was a character whose family hadn't been "forced" to Indian Territory.

Most of the Indian boarding schools weren't as benevolent as the portrayal in The Revenant. I would have really loved to find out more as to why that wasn't the case here. Overall, it was a fun read for seeing what went on at female boarding schools during the late 19th century.
A stolen identity, a runaway school girl, a budding romance, a suspicious death, and a restless spirit haunting a girls' school... what's not to love? Seventeen-year-old Willie assumes the identity of a recent graduate from her Tennessee academy and runs away to Indian Territory to become a teacher at the Cherokee Female Seminary in 1896 Tahlequah rather than leave school to go home and help her family. She expects to find quaint, ignorant young girls who need to learn the basics of the three R's, but her stereotypes are quickly disproved. Instead she finds she is to teach English to the upper-level girls, the daughters of the Cherokee elite. These girls are Willie's age and every bit as well-educated as Willie herself. Willie quickly realizes she is not prepared - she struggles to find engaging assignments and has no idea how to grade compositions - but she determines to make it work. At the same time Willie must cope with her students' and colleagues' belief that a vengeful ghost, the spirit of a former student who drowned in the nearby river the year before, haunts the school. Mysterious sounds in Willie's room and unexplainable events make even Willie question whether spirits really can haunt the living. All this coupled with Willie's strong attraction to a young man from the Cherokee boys' school add up to an intriguing tale.