Jacob Have I Loved

Title: “Jacob Have I loved”

Author: Katherine Paterson                                       

Genre: Historical                              

Publisher: Crowell           

Copyright Date:  1995

Pages in Book: 263

Reading Level: 4-7 grade

Summary: Sara Louise aka Wheeze, is a young girl who has a hard time finding herself and is constantly in her beautiful sisters shadow. Her twin sister Caroline, was born sickly and near death. Because of this, her parents and everyone around her devoted a lot of time to her. She grew beautiful, and had a wonderful singing voice, unlike her sister Sara who no one really paid attention to. Wheeze had few friends on the island, but one was named Call, who would go crabbing with her. They meet the Captain, an elderly man who disappeared from the town after an incident with his father. Wheeze develops a crush on the Captain who later marries the cat lady. Call and Caroline both leave the island (Call to go into the navy and Caroline to pursue her music career) and soon fall in love and get married. Wheeze is distraught by this, and after having an emotional breakdown, her mother convinces her to leave the island to find herself.  She goes to college and goes to school to become a lawyer. After much trial, she becomes a midwife/nurse, marries a widowed father, and tries to make a worthy reputation in this new town. One night, she’s called in to help give birth to twins. They are both born, the boy healthy but the girls is sick and close to death. Wheeze does everything she can to keep the child from dying, forgetting about the baby boy. Upon realizing this, she checks up on him, and suddenly realizes that she did the same thing her parents did. They focused on the sick child. She tells the parents to watch and care for the healthy child, just as much as they do the sick baby girl.

Reaction: I thought this was a well written book, but with a lot of disappointment. Sara/Wheeze’s life seemed very depressing and she struggled with almost everything that she did. I know that there are people that go throughout life in that same way, but it was hard for me to read about, because it was slightly depressing.

Recommendation: I don’t know that I would recommend this book to many people, just because it was slightly depressing and I don’t want people to finish reading the book and think, “well that was a waste of my time, it only got sadder and sadder.”

Potential Problems/Conflicts: The main problem for me was that the book just kept getting worse and worse for Sara/Wheeze. It wasn’t a happy book, and I actually had a real problem with that.