Book Review 9

Bibliography
Frost, Helen. 2006. The Braid. New York, New York: Frances Foster Books. ISBN 30054000291600.

Plot Summary
Frost tells the story of Sarah and Jeannie, two sisters living in Scotland in 1850 during a time when thousands were forced to evacuate because it was more profitable to have crops on the land than tenants. Through poems braided together from each sisters’ point of view, Frost explains how their family decides to seek refuge in Canada, but Sarah decides to hide when the family leaves and stays with her grandmother who is going back to her home in Mingulay. Sarah braids her hair and Jeannie’s together the night before she leaves and cuts the braids while Jeannie sleeps, leaving each sister with the others braid to hold on to since they will be separated. The girls’ lives continue on different continents with heartbreak and hope experienced by each. Both sisters find their own path and life, and Frost tells this engaging story through narrative and praise poems woven together in a easy to read yet complex format.

Critical Analysis

Frost’s writing is easy to read and understand, with the long narrative poems offering the necessary facts and the praise poems digging beneath the obvious to the true emotion experienced by each sister. The title of the book is two fold: it represents the braid each sister carries to remember the other, but it also represents the format used by Frost to put this verse novel together. Though the format may not look obviously difficult, the notes on form in the back of the book offer a look at the painstaking complexity involved in braiding these poems together. Frost’s system of braiding the praise and narrative poems is both difficult and accomplished, but well worth the effort which results in the reader being completely taken in by the story, eager to turn the next page.

The imagery created by Frost’s words helps the reader hold onto each experience even after the last page. In “Shadows” which is written after Sarah finds out she will be having her child without Murdo, her lover, the shadows are offered to “leave our thoughts concealed, hold shimmering hands across a face when some slight change in color or expression would reveal too much”. Simple and poignant, it is hard not to relate to that gray area in life when everyone needs a shadow to protect them from the “solid sharp-edged” experience possibly waiting around the corner.

The Braid is a roller coaster of emotions as each girl loses their family, Jeannie through death and Sarah through her choice to stay behind. Each then attempts to find love and ways to survive with beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking results. Choosing to take different paths, Sarah and Jeannie read like two parts of a whole. Frost offers the reader a glance behind door number one and two to show how different decisions in life can lead to opposite results. However, what is truly amazing about Frost is how similar she shows the sisters’ lives to be despite their different personalities and choices. For unique reasons and motivations, each sister finds her way, learns to be stronger than once believed possible, and never forget each other in the process.

Review Excerpts
“Appropriate, original imagery and understated, natural voices make these poems sensitive and insightful.” Kirkus Reviews

“…she makes it look like so much fun that readers may want to try out some of the forms themselves.” Publishers Weekly

Connections
*Read Keesha’s House. Compare the motivations of Sarah and Jeannie with the motivations of the characters in Keesha’s House. Discuss and have students chart what and how each character survives and what their driving force is.

*Read Witness by Karen Hesse. Discuss the experiences faced by the characters in Witness and The Braid and how each author handles writing about the emotions related to the challenges of the time. How does each author effectively convey emotion and voice through the poems written?