Last month I visited my brother down in Lexington.  In addition to touring all the horse farms, we spent a day at the Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill.  The Shakers were an interesting experiment in communal living.  Because they believed that Christ’s return was imminent, they segregated men and women.  All the buildings had two doors–one for men and one for women.  Women slept in rooms on one side of the house while men slept in rooms on the other.  Men and women ate a different tables, had different chores, and worshipped on different sides of the church.  The Shaker movement eventually died out (though there is one small Shaker community still in New England), leaving behind its art, furniture, and architecture–all of which I find beautiful in its simplicity.

I enjoyed learning about the Shakers and walking through their village, but it is in reading a story that I understand more about these people and their beliefs.  A friend of mine (another big reader) bought me The Believers, a historical fiction novel about the Shakers in Kentucky.

Rebecca Fowler loved Richard Cooper from the time they were children.  She eagerly married him when she was just seventeen, and for a while they shared a happy life.  After their children were stillborn, though, Richard looks for answers in the religious revival sweeping through the frontier.  When he decides to join the new Shaker community, Rebecca follows, even though she must remain seperate from him.  She hopes her love can pull him back to her, but he draws ever deeper into their beliefs.

Rebecca is not sure about these Shakers.  She appreciates their desire for order and simplicity and the effecient manner in which they run the village, but she cannot give her heart to their beliefs as Richard has.  Because she is both within the community and outside of its inner circle, she questions.  Is her freedom to be the price of order?

Janice Holt Giles has recreated the life of the Shakers on the Kentucky frontier in The Believers (University Press of Kentucky 1989).  This is an older book (first published in 1954 by Houghton Mifflin), but I found myself caught up in Rebecca’s story.  The different characters have very different reactions to the Shaker experience.  Some, like her husband Richard, get caught up in the religious ferver until they are willing to sacrifice everything and even cause harm to those who loved them.  Others find the Shaker way of life to be a way out worse circumstances.  Still others chafe under the restrictions.  Rather than presenting the ideal as the recreated village does, the story brings to life all the humanity that tried–and often failed–to live it out.  If you want to learn more about a part of our history that doesn’t get much time in history textbooks, this book would be a good place to start.

Believe it or not, families lived on the rock that was home to Alcatraz, the prison of some of the most notorious criminals of their day, the prisoners other prisons didn’t want.  Gennifer Choldenko has written a brilliant novel that tells the story of one of the children who might have played next to the prison yard.  Al Capone Does My Shirts (Scholastic 2004) is hilarious and heartwarming.  Myu only regret is that I waited so long to read it.

Moose Flanagan is the new kid on the block–not the cell block, thank goodness.  After his dad took a job as guard and electricial at Alcatraz, Moose moved to the island.  Now he has to fit in with new neighbors and at a new school.  Complicating matters is the fact he is stuck caring for his sister Natalie, who has been age ten for the past five years.  Moose might complaine about Natalie’s button obsession, embarrassing tantrums, and numerical fascination, but he will not allow anyone else to bother her.  How can he trust the other kids at Alcatraz when he doesn’t even know them?

I loved the other kids who called Alcatraz home.  Moose first meets Theresa, a bossy seven-year-old who never takes “no” for an answer.  Unfortunately, her twelve-year-old brother Jimmy can’t play baseball at all.  The rest of the gang is filled out with Annie and Piper.  Annie has a surprisingly good arm for a girl, but Piper is trouble.  As the warden’s daughter, she leads them in all kinds of schemes–charging classmates on the mainland for Al Capone to wash their shirts and sneaking on the ferry to meet Al Capone’s mother.  Whenever Piper shows up, Moose can’t remember which way is up. 

Choldenko weaves the facts and legends of life on Alcatraz in 1935 into a story that centers on family and friendship.  Everyone is fascinated with the big-name gangsters held on the island, especially the infamous Al Capone.  Moose, however, must figure out what is best for both Natalie and the rest of the family.  He doesn’t like how his life has changed since being on Alcatraz, but neither  is he sure they can go back home again.  Just when everything is about to fall apart, he wonders if Capone can indeed do anything.  The ending is perfect, but I won’t spoil it for you now.  Go and read it for yourself.  I will certainly be looking for the sequel, Al Capone Shines My Shoes.

I can’t believe I waited this long to read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne.  Someone should have shoved it into my hands and said, “Read this.  It is an important book.”  I wouldn’t have minded.  I’ve always been drawn to Holocaust literature because it makes me question what would I have done? 

It didn’t take long to read once I picked it up this morning.  It will take longer for the story to quit echoing through my head and heart.  As I turned the last few pages, I wanted to scream, “No.”  How can such innocence meet with such tragedy?

Nine-year-old Bruno is decidedly not happy about his family’s move from their lovely home in Berlin to a desolate place called “Out-with.”  He misses playing with his best friends, sliding down the bannister, and exploring the nooks and crannies in his home.  There are no other children at Out-with to play with other than his older sister, Gretel, who is much too mature for play. 

Bruno begins to explore along the fence that encloses the mysterious people in the striped pajamas.  Things begin to look up when he makes a friend with Schmuel.  As they talk every day through the fence, they discover the things they share and the things that make them different.  Their secret friendship leads to a startling conclusion.

What strikes me most in this book is the contrast between Bruno’s innocence and the horror of the Holocaust.  Bruno has no clue that he is watching one of the horrors of the modern world unfold before his eyes.  His mispronunciations of “Out-with” and the “Fury” add depth to the horror he is unaware of as the adults around him refuse to share any answers to his questions.  Both Bruno and Schmuel wonder why their worlds have been turned upside down and what it must be like on the other side of the fence.

The back cover says, ‘Fences like this exist all over the world.  We hope you never have to encounter one.”  We do enounter fences to shut other out every day.  The question then becomes, what will you do about it?  Will you add another brick or roll of barbed wire, or will you reach through with the hand of friendship?