Hope Springs: Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson's new novel, Feathers, takes on the weightiest of human concerns--race, life, death, prejudice, selfishness, fear of the unknown other, faith, and simply making contact with other human beings--with the lightest of touches. Almost everything takes place inside the busy mind of eleven-year-old Frannie, who tries to make some sense out of human hope in the face of all that threatens it.

On January 6, 1971, the day after her teacher Mrs. Johnson reads Emily Dickinson's poem, "Hope Is a Thing with Feathers," a new boy comes to the class, a white boy with long blond hair, so clearly different from the rest of the students that class tough guy Trevor names him "Jesus boy." Frannie is drawn to the boy's calm and his acceptance of Trevor's attempted put down, and her religious friend Samanatha wonders if the boy really is Jesus, coming back in her own time. Thoughts swirl through Frannie's mind, thoughts about her mother's pregnancy and the three babies that didn't live, her deaf brother and the hearing girls who reject him despite his good looks, thoughts about religion and fear and how everyone seems to keep on hoping when life seems as fragile as a feather.

When Trevor forces a showdown with "Jesus boy" on the playground, the boy unexpectedly encourages Trevor to fight, taunting him with the rejection of his white father whose fatherhood only shows in Trevor's pale eyes and light skin. "Jesus boy" is no more a savior than the rest of the people in Frannie's life, but after all her thinking and watching, Frannie takes this moment of confrontation to act.

I went to Trevor. The minute I saw him falling, I went toward him. It was automatic. Something inside of me just said, 'Go!' And I did. Because Trevor was falling and then he was in the snow. And in the snow he looked smaller and weaker and more human than any of us. When I looked up, the Jesus Boy was on the other side of me. And we were both lifting Trevor even as he tried to shake us off him and keep from crying.

Woodson's quiet novel teems with the stuff of real life as experienced through the eyes of a young character with an old soul, for whom sorrow's springs are all too real and yet for whom hope is a sweet song "that never stops at all."