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Summary
Summary
Four years ago, Judith and her best friend disappeared from their small town of Roswell Station. Two years ago, only Judith returned, permanently mutilated, reviled and ignored by those who were once her friends and family.
Unable to speak, Judith lives like a ghost in her own home, silently pouring out her thoughts to the boy who's owned her heart as long as she can remember--even if he doesn't know it--her childhood friend, Lucas.
But when Roswell Station is attacked, long-buried secrets come to light, and Judith is forced to choose: continue to live in silence, or recover her voice, even if it means changing her world, and the lives around her, forever.
This startlingly original novel will shock and disturb you; it will fill you with Judith's passion and longing; and its mysteries will keep you feverishly turning the pages until the very last.
Author Notes
Julie Berry received a B.S. in communication from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an M.F.A. in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College. Her novels include The Amaranth Enchantment, Secondhand Charm, the Splurch Academy for Disruptive Boys series, The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, and The Passion of Dolssa. All the Truth That's In Me received the 2014 Silver Inky award, the Whitney Award for YA, and the Westchester Fiction Prize.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (7)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Two years after her kidnapping, 18-year-old Judith returns to her small hometown of Roswell Station, maimed and incapable of speaking due to her mutilated tongue. She spends the ensuing years shunned by the townspeople, but when invaders threaten Roswell Station, she must decide if her secrets can be revealed to save her neighbors. Narrator McInerney delivers a solid performance in this audio edition. The story is not told chronologically and therefore McInerney must move back and forth through time, alternating her tone appropriately for scenes set before, during, and after Judith's kidnapping. The narrator also provides distinct character voices that are varied and appropriate. However, McInerney is at her best when rendering Judith's thoughts and vocalizing the character's inner frustration. Ages 12-up. A Viking hardcover. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Berrys (The Amaranth Enchantment, rev. 5/09) novel is set in fictional Roswell Station, a village that in its appearance and claustrophobic atmosphere seems to resemble an early American colonial settlement. Bit by bit, readers gradually learn all the truth from eighteen-year-old narrator Judith, whose present-tense description of unfolding events, along with memories of the past, tells a harrowing tale. She speaks directly (though only in her head) to Lucas, the boy shes loved since childhood. Its her close friendship with Lucas that has helped her survive both a traumatic two-year captivity by a man crazy with grief and her equally painful return home to a town that seems to blame her for the event. Judith cant defend herself: her captor cut out half her tongue before releasing her. Berry keeps her readers on edge, tantalizing us with pieces of the puzzle right up until the gripping conclusion. Those who care for such things will appreciate the books names: Roswell connotes a place of conspiracy and controversy, cover-ups and hysteria; Judiths last name, Finch, is fitting (she loves to sing, then loses and recovers her voice); and Lucas, of course, is the light of her life. Readers racing through the storys murder mystery and thrilling romance may miss much of Berrys lovely, poetic writing; luckily, many will finish only to turn right back to the beginning, this time to savor a more leisurely paced, equally satisfying read. jennifer m. brabander (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Like all things in this cunningly stylized novel, the setting is left undefined; a rough guess is mid-1800s America. The characters and plot, too, are mysteries in need of unfolding, and Berry's greatest accomplishment is jumbling the time line with confidence, thereby sprinkling every page with minor (or major) revelations. These trappings gild a not-that-unusual melodrama: 18-year-old Judith pines for Lucas, who has chosen another girl. Perhaps this is because Judith is mute, her tongue having been cut off by a madman who just happened to be Lucas' father. A few frustrating misunderstandings aside, the story gracefully incorporates everything from the right to education to the horrors of war to the freedom that comes along with acquiring language. What will stick in most readers' minds, though, is the first-person prose, which ranges from the unusually insightful (We were four people: the children we'd been, and grown strangers now) to the just plain pretty (Will her china face turn bronze beside you as you labor in your fields?). A strange but satisfying and relatively singular mix.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
WE TELL YOUNG WOMEN today to speak up for themselves in matters personal and political, but if we look to examples in classical and contemporary literature, the results of truth-telling can be dire. Arguably, the most famous heroine to suffer from this danger is tragic Lavinia from Shakespeare's bloody "Titus Andronicus," whose father's enemies first rape her, then cut out her tongue and lop off her hands so she can't expose their identities. Doggedly, she uses her mouth and a stick to scrape their names in the dirt but is later murdered for her efforts. In Greek mythology, Cassandra rejects Apollo's romantic overtures, and as punishment he curses her so she will always tell the truth but never be believed. She too is raped, in the fall of Troy, held captive by Agamemnon and then murdered by his jealous wife. In more recent history, Melinda Sordino, the stoic protagonist of Laurie Halse Anderson's modern young adult classic "Speak," becomes selectively mute after being raped at a party and spends a year trying to find her voice again. Brutal examples all, but which is worse: not to be able to speak, or to speak the truth and not be believed? This is the question Julie Berry raises in her disturbing and provocative first novel for teenagers. Judith, the dutiful daughter of what seems to be a Puritan family (Berry sets her tale in a frustratingly vague colonial setting), is 14 when she is abducted from her village. Imprisoned by her captor for two years, she returns home with her tongue cut out Now 18, she is shunned by both family and neighbors, who insist on believing her attacker took "her maidenhood" and view her as a "fallen" woman. "I am shocking. What was done to me was shocking. I am outside the boundaries forever, no longer decent." Resigned to her lot, Judith lives on a small farm with her scornful mother and indifferent brother. Her only respite from work and her own dark thoughts is the crush she nurses for Lucas, a neighbor and childhood sweetheart. When her quiet village is attacked by an army of "homelanders" intent on taking the fertile farmland for themselves, Judith is desperate to save Lucas and the men who follow him into a losing battle. She flees to the one place she never wanted to see again: her kidnapper's hidden forest lair. Through gestures and grunts, she persuades the madman to use his arsenal of gunpowder to blow up the attackers' ships. In return, she reluctantly offers to become his wife. But when the plan works and the smoke clears, her kidnapper's corpse lies among those of their adversaries. The mysterious explosives expert is identified as Colonel Whiting, Lucas's father and a former war hero who was believed to be already dead. Naturally, the villagers want to know "where in Jesus' name" he has been, and if the dumbfounded Lucas had any knowledge of his father's deception. But Judith is unable to tell anyone that Whiting was the monster who took her tongue and that Lucas knew nothing. All these sensational events unfold in just the first quarter of the novel, and you might wonder how Berry will maintain suspense after uncovering one of the major plot points of her story so quickly. But many secrets are yet to be divulged, and Berry discloses them in fleeting flashbacks that add another layer of tension to Judith's current situation. Judith and Lucas's tender romance, conveyed mostly through glances, gestures and one very chaste night spent together, is challenged at every turn by circumstances and the young lovers' own conflicting understanding of the truth and lies that surround them. Readers will be kept enjoyably unsettled until all is finally resolved in the very last pages. Even though society would have us think we've left those tragic characters of female mythology behind, Judith's story reminds us of the need to listen for the often voiceless fears girls may be concealing behind their bravado. With the help of unlikely allies, Judith is finally able to recover her voice, face her accusers and speak "all the truth that's in me." She seizes the right that today's young women often take for granted: to be heard and believed. Julie Berry effectively combines elements of traditional genre literature to create a distinctive novel that includes a powerful message about the value of women's voices and what is lost when they are silenced. JENNIFER HUBERT SWAN is the middle-school librarian at the Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School. She blogs at Reading Rants.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 8 Up-Some things are better left unsaid-or so Judith thinks. Four years ago Judith and her best friend Lottie disappeared. Judith came back two years later but altered, part of her tongue had been cut off. Now, two years after her return, she still isn't at peace; her mother holds onto resentment, her childhood love is getting married, and others in her Puritan town shun her. Trouble is on the horizon as Homelanders, a vengeful group that tried to take over the town years ago, are set to arrive and Judith must make hard choices. Can she protect the ones she loves? This story is haunting, romantic, mysterious, and well written. As the story progresses, Judith shares bits of the past, allowing the reader to slowly gather information about what happened to Judith during those two years and eventually learn who killed Lottie. Kathleen McInferney reads the story using different tones for each character. Her voice for Judith is spot-on in the way she addresses both her internal voice and her speech impediment. Reluctant readers and avid ones will be clamoring for this title with enticing cover art and an original story (Viking, 2013). This is a definite purchase for audiobook collections.-Katie Llera, Bound Brook High School, NJ (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Eighteen-year-old Judith Finch gradually reveals the horror of her two-year disappearance in a stunning historical murder mystery and romance. One summer four years ago, Judith Finch and her friend Lottie Pratt disappeared. After two years, only Judith returned. Lottie's naked body was found in the river, and Judith stumbled back on her own, her appearance shocking the town--not just because she had returned, but that her tongue had been cut out, and she can't tell anyone what happened to her. Illiterate, maimed, cursed, doomed to be an outsider but always and forever in love with Lucas Whiting, Judith finds a way to tell her story, saying, "I don't believe in miracles, but if the need is great, a girl might make her own miracle," and as her story unfolds, all the truth that's in her is revealed. Set in what seems to be early-18th-century North America, the story is told through the voice inside Judith's head--simple and poetic, full of hurt and yearning, and almost always directed toward Lucas in a haunting, mute second person. Every now and then, a novel comes along with such an original voice that readers slow down to savor the poetic prose. This is such a story. A tale of uncommon elegance, power and originality. (Historical thriller. 12 up)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Berry's (The Trouble with Squids) first YA novel is both a dark mystery and a romance. Two years after Judith and her best friend Lottie were kidnapped, Judith suddenly returns alone. She is rejected by her remaining family members-her father died while she was gone-and most of the citizens of Roswell Station. Mutilated and unable to speak clearly, Judith still manages to help her childhood friend Lucas save the town from an attack, but that only initiates the true tension of the story. The author never identifies when the story takes place, but the setting is clearly a more distant past than the jacket copy reveals. Reader Kathleen McInerney masters the dual challenges of moving between Judith's damaged speaking voice and her highly developed inner thoughts and narrating a story that's written partly in fragments. The style is an often poetic rendering of young love and angst that transcends the vague time period. Verdict Highly recommended for readers age 12 and up.-Joyce Kessel, Villa Maria Coll., Buffalo (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
