"Witness" By Karen Hesse

Annotation:

Small town in Vermont takes on dramatic changes when the KKK slime their way into authority by using their most common weapons. Fear and intimidation. Perseverance, and mercy are the only weapons to fight back with.

Justification for a Neutral Stance:

Leanora Sutter, and Esther Hirsch; African-American, and Jewish teens respectively are already eyed suspiciously by the townspeople, except a few kind souls in the town. When the KKK worms their way into town, they become the targets of hate, and discrimination.

The Klan also affects many other people in the town, many do not wish to be a part of it, but some jump at the chance. One, a grocer, decides to join as a way to boost sales in his store, despite his wife's protest. The other, the local Reverend of all people joins for his own reasons.

Through several plot twists, an unlikely assassin makes an attempt on Esther's father, while another is ordered to poison the well water at Leanora's place, but due to an attack of conscience cannot bring himself to do it. The insanity of the Klan's reign of terror come to an abrupt end when Calvin Coolidge is elected president.

This book I can neither reject, nor nominate for several reasons. First I will do the unpleasant thing, and announce it's shortcomings. The story of "Witness" is a bit hard to follow, it's obvious how the Klan comes to town, but I could not really determine why. Second, the Klan leave with no reason that I could discern in one reading. Third, as a YA novel, it does not delve much into the adolescent developmental process. Lastly, the story didn't really "grab me." It's a good story, but in my opinion it was not great.

The things this book does well, is it offers up a few interesting characters, and there are some themes that while not Young Adult themed, should be learned by YA. First, the characters, Iris Weaver, the local booze runner, is interesting as a free spirit but appears to have no actual purpose in the story, or with the Klan.

Merlin van Tornhaut is kind of sympathetic, but not very. He gets implicated as a murder suspect in a shooting case, but he couldn't have done it. He was about to poison some body's well that night, luckily he didn't make it. His only redeeming quality is that his cnscience kept him from being an effective Klan member.

The preacher was just a creep, mainly because a Christian man should be preaching peace, but he was a hatemonger, and pedophile.

Esther, by far my favorite character, was incredibly innocent, and she was just an endearing presence of love in a maelstrom of hate.

I think the themes in this book also are a redeeming quality, and may be of interest to YA. Firstly it will allow them to explore how ignorant racism is, and show that victims of hate could be someone like you or me. Second, "Witness" shows what happens when peer pressure gets out of control until reason has left everyone.

Although there are some good themes addressed in this book, and some of the characters are of note, "Witness" is a good book that could have been better. The characters and situations are a great start for a great story, but the story feels like it's missing a few things. It failed to draw me into the story in any significant way, and resolved events too cleanly and quickly. I cannot nominate this book for our award because it lacks many qualities that it should possess, but nor can I reject it because it does bring up some pertinent issues.


Genre: Verse novel, Historical fiction