Margaret Moore is a summer girl. Every summer she goes to the Marshall Naval Academy on Lake Nanweshmot to be with her friends, to be part of something larger than herself, to find out who she is. But something happened last summer, and she can’t remember all of it, but she knows something bad happened. And it was her fault.
Margaret is a part of Deck Five, a tight band of summer girls who have been together since the beginning. Their first summer they were Butterflies, collecting badges as they learned to sail and identify trees and shoot arrows. The second summer they were Dragonflies. But now they are almost women, strong and bonded tighter than sisters, Margaret and Rose and Nisreen and Flor. They are summer girls together, working hard and playing hard, inseparable and powerful.
But Margaret has a secret. There is a boy, and she can’t tell her friends about him. He asked her to keep them a secret, and she agreed. She kept secrets from her sisters, and she paid the price for that when she saw him with another girl. He had been driving her around, and the Deck Five girls were walking to the root beer stand, and most of the girls were able to jump out of the way of his car, but Margaret was slower to respond. Margaret is a poet and a dreamer, and she was paying less attention to the road in front of her. He almost hit her with his car, and she had to stand in the road and watch as he asked the girl in the car if she was okay. He didn’t ask Margaret. And she knew what it meant.
Her friends, her roommates, her sisters wanted her to tell them the truth. They said they would stand by her, no matter what. But she couldn’t find the words. She couldn’t tell them the truth. And that’s what came between them. That’s what became that thing that happened last summer. Although no one really knows what happened last summer. No one is talking. Margaret isn’t talking. But will she be able to find the words to bring her Deck Five sisters together again?
I Am Margaret Moore is a powerful story of growing up and figuring out who you are. Author Hannah Capin has woven together a tale of poetry and semaphores, sisterhood and ghosts, love and secrets that will change the way you think about boys and girls, about the have-some vs. the have-much, about love and power. Told by Margaret, her poetic voice transports the reader to those hot summer days where the air shimmers, the fireflies dance, and the stars are far too numerous to count.
I was enthralled by this book. The beginning speaks of secrets, of what happened last summer and of girls disappearing and of the ghosts at the academy. I was sucked in almost immediately, wanting to know what happened. I wanted to know Margaret’s secrets and find out everything that had happened, and I wanted to know what would happen next. I Am Margaret Moore is layered with truths that make sense to teenagers and then with truths that will turn you into an adult, and you can see Margaret transform from a naïve girl to a wise and powerful woman. This is a story that will fascinate and will haunt, and I know I’ll be carrying this one around for a while, trying to get my head around its fullness and its truths.
Egalleys for I Am Margaret Moore were provided by Wednesday Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.
