Reading Through History: Emily of Deep Valley by Maud Hart Lovelace (1950)

Emily Webster is a few years younger than Betsy Ray and Tacy Kelly, the stars of Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy-Tacy series, but she lives and moves within the same community in Deep Valley, Minnesota. At the start of this stand-alone novel about Emily, she is just about to graduate high school. The day is bittersweet, both because Emily's parents died years ago and can't be there to celebrate it with her, and because she won't be going off to college, as she perceives that her grandfather, a man from a different time period, would prefer that she stay home and keep house for him. As the summer passes and her classmates all move onto the next chapters of their lives, Emily begins to see that things will have to change for her as well if she is going to avoid being lonely all the time. So, though she waits anxiously from news of her friends who have left home, she also begins to make the most of her new adult life in Deep Valley by going to dances, starting up a class, and helping some Syrian children make friends. As Emily begins to develop her own interests, she also develops confidence in her capabilities and the work she is meant to do slowly reveals itself.

I really enjoyed this look at young adult life after the turn of the 20th century from the point of view of someone whose life hasn't been quite as charmed as that of Betsy or Tacy. Emily is a vulnerable and likable underdog, and the reader is on her side from the outset, eager to see her find her path and come into her own. Though Emily's experiences are largely products of her time period, every generation of teenagers and twenty-somethings goes through that period of beginning to discern how they wish to spend their lives, and often this does involve going against the grain, or at least taking a slightly different path from one's friends. Emily, in her quiet way, gives girls a strong role model for charting the unfamiliar waters of life just after high school, and she provides a strong sense of hope as well, as things do ultimately work out for her.

In terms of history, the descriptions of Deep Valley's Memorial Day celebration in which Emily's grandfather participates are a very interesting look back in time, and Emily's patriotism, especially, is a quality worthy of admiration that we don't often see mentioned in novels for kids. Reading aloud the chapter about Memorial Day would make a nice family tradition, I think, and could be helpful in reminding kids what Memorial Day is actually about.

Understanding and enjoying this book does not require any prior knowledge of the Betsy-Tacy series, and I only saved it for last because it happened to be the last of the books that I acquired.  I tend to think of it as being in the same category as Carney's House Party or the later Betsy books, prior to her wedding, because, like those novels, it deals with questions more likely to be of interest to older teens, but there is no objectionable content that should keep the book from a younger child. There are also a lot of lessons to be learned from this book about self-confidence and marching to one's own drum beat that would resonate especially well during the middle school years, which is likely when I will pass it down to my own daughters.