Going Softly: Behind You by Jacqueline Woodson

Author Jacqueline Woodson, whose novel Feathers received a Newbery Honor Award recently, is one who writes for all ages and whose books have earned Newbery, Caldecott, Coretta Scott King, and other notable awards. Reminded of her work by her recent awards, I've recently read some of her earlier work. Here are two related books for young adult readers.

Ellie and Jeremiah are fifteen years old, the children of well-to-do, successful New Yorkers, both students at Percy Academy, a prestigious private prep school in Manhattan. When they seem to fall in love at first sight, it would seem that the course of teen love would be smooth for them. It is not, mainly because Ellie is white and Jeremiah is biracial. There are family problems, as well: Jeremiah's parents divorce when his father falls in love with another woman, and Ellie's parents, modern and liberal though they think they are, cannot quite picture their young daughter as part of an interracial couple.

In If You Come Softly,Woodson's intimate look at first love, its depth and pain, is a sensitive story of the fleeting beauty of this beginning relationship between two beautiful young people whose feelings come up against the ugliness of society's reaction to their being together.

In her stand alone sequel, Behind You, Jeremiah is killed by police in a case of mistaken identity, and Ellie, his parents, and his close friends all find it hard to accept his death and go on without him. Jeremiah's spirit, too, is bound to the people he cannot forget and cannot really leave behind.

Woodson traces the history of grief in the separate voices of Ellie, his parents Nelia and Norman, and his friends Kennedy and Carlton, as they gradually turn from isolation and toward each other for solace and a way to go forward into a different life without Jeremiah. As Jeremiah says at the conclusion,

"When you die, you turn away from the world you've always known and begin the long, slow walk into the next place. And behind you--everyone you left is taking a step deeper into their new world. The world they're learning to live in without you.

When you die, your voice becomes the wind and whispers to the living...."

As in all of Woodson's books, there are no sudden and easy revelations, just the slow return of hope and the joy of life.

For my earlier posts on Jacqueline Woodson's Newbery Honor books Show Way (Newbery Honor Book) and Feathers, look here and here.