1.       Bibliography:

Frost, Helen. 2009. Crossing Stones.  New York:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  ISBN  0374316538

2.       Plot Summary:

Murial Jorgensen is an eighteen -year-old Dutch-American living in Michigan during the time of World War I.  The year is 1917.  Woodrow Wilson is President of the United States.  Murial’s male classmates are heading off to the war.  Her suffragette Aunt Vera is a prominent influence in Murial’s life, and she is contemplating what options she has as a young woman at this point in time in American history.  She feels familial pressure to marry Frank, her close neighbor and family friend, the brother of her best friend, Emma.  Murial is internally grappling with what it means to be a female, while many women are challenging the status-quo and picketing for the right to vote.  She is very opinionated and often clashes with her teacher on issues such as the war.  Frank tragically dies in action, and her brother Ollie returns wounded from the war.  Murial travels to Washington, D.C. to help her Aunt Vera return to Michigan, and she very nearly loses her beloved little sister to the flu.  Through these and other events, Murial witnesses the ways in which life can be fragile and decisions can be neither black nor white.  As she embarks on the adventure of her future, a life different from that of her mother’s, she is very much still enveloped in the love of her family.  Anchored by this assurance, she ventures out into the world to discover her truth as a strong, free-thinking woman.

3.       Critical Analysis:

This verse novel will suit readers from 7^th-12^th grade well.  How fascinating that Frost writes an epic poem to reveal the changing beliefs and mores of this period in history.  The emotional appeal of the novel is strong and natural through each tragedy and turning point of the story.  

The repeated imagery of the creek between the two families’ farms pervades the novel, especially poignant when Murial and Emma mourn the death of Frank: “The creek is rushing past…all I can do is help her lift the rock,/swing it back and forth, back and forth again,/until together we can let it go, heaving it/out into the middle of the creek.”  The young women are learning that life’s hardest experiences sometimes engulf us, and then the processing takes years and years to wear down the boulders of confusion to a manageable size that can then be processed and internalized as wisdom, as a “crossing stone” that connects us and makes us stronger.  Further, the imagery of the war seen through the experiences of Frank and Ollie are heartbreaking and shocking, as when Ollie tries to remember what happened to him in battle:  “…explosion (space) all night/couldn’t sleep (space) losing/track of time…”  This generation grew up rapidly and carried intense trauma into their futures.  Yet, the love of Emma and Ollie gives hope and new life to the story, as does Emma’s mature, strong resolution that, “making sure everyone is fed and clothed and cared for—that also takes a kind of pluck.”  In contrast, Murial is drawn to holding dissenting opinions regarding the war and supporting women’s suffrage, and she will have her Aunt Vera’s support and guidance to follow this path.

Throughout the verse novel, the poet utilizes prominent agrarian and nature imagery, as when Emma muses, “Corn, potatoes, butternut squash.  A woodchuck waddles through the garden.  A V of geese flies overhead.  I’ve always loved this time of year, when all the work we’ve done comes back to feed us.”  The reader senses the strong roots that Emma has grown, which, along with Ollie, will assure a solid, sound foundation to rebuild after World War I, after unspeakable loss…to carry on and to hope again.

At the conclusion of the novel, Frost includes insightful, “Notes on the Form,” in which she explains her reasoning in writing meticulously alternated stone-shaped, “cupped-hand sonnets” for the poems from the characters Ollie and Emma, and poems intended by the poet to resemble a flowing creek to express Murial's voice.  Further, Frost explains her artistic intentions for carefully connecting the rhymes of the stone poems, revealing the intense focus and planning of the poet in her writing of the verse novel.  Every line was engineered to serve a purpose in the building of the story she chooses to tell in Crossing Stones.  The rhythm of the creek-form poems is free and winding, searching for new meaning and new vistas; the rhythm of the stone-form poems is steady and patterned, seeking and reaching to build upon existing structure, strengthening and improving what is already present.  

4.       Review Excerpt(s):

Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, 2010, Honor Book

From Booklist:  “The historical details (further discussed in an author’s note) and feminist messages are purposeful, but Frost skillfully pulls her characters back from stereotype with their poignant, private, individual voices and nuanced questions, which will hit home with contemporary teens, about how to recover from loss and build a joyful, rewarding future in an unsettled world.”

From Kirkus Reviews:  “With care and precision, Frost deftly turns plainspoken conversations and the internal monologues of her characters into stunning poems that combine to present three unique and thoughtful perspectives on war, family, love and loss.  Heartbreaking yet ultimately hopeful, this is one to savor.”

5.       Connections:

Frost’s verse novel Crossing Stones, in its entirety or selected passages, would serve as a springboard for discussion and writing response assignments during history lessons of World War I and/or Women’s Suffrage. 

For an English/creative writing connection, after the completion of this verse novel reading, students could choose to write in the point of view of Murial, Emma, or Ollie (or Grace!), ten years after the conclusion of the story.  Students could write an accompanying essay explaining why they made the choices and predictions they wrote as they surmise what may have transpired ten years after, in the lives of these characters.