Mine Eyes Have Seen

The critically acclaimed author of The Second Bend in the River mines the diaries of John Brown's daughter, Annie, to portray the complicated relationship she had with her father during the summer before the antislavery crusader's famous raid on Harper's Ferry.

Grade 7 Up?During the summer of 1859, radical abolitionist John Brown covertly gathers his forces to attack the arsenal at Harper's Ferry. His 15-year-old daughter, Annie, is summoned to help keep house and to watch for intruders. She thrills at the chance to become important in the eyes of her distant, Scripture-quoting, dictatorial father. Through the lens of Annie's vision, Rinaldi constructs a believable Brown, one whom Annie alternatively loves, fears, and resents. Readers are given glimpses into the charismatic yet enigmatic leader who could speak of being led by God while at the same time encouraging all sorts of deceit to keep his plans secret, a contradiction that angers his daughter. Annie is also troubled by the strain in her relationship with the young man she plans to marry, who is one of her father's volunteers. In the end, she is devastated by the folly of the attack, the death of her intended, and her father's seeming inability to forgive her for her inadvertent role in the accidental death of a younger sister. This book is written as if it were Annie's journal, her attempt to come to terms with all that has happened and all that she has lost. It is a poignant and deeply moving tale based on extensive research into the life of the real Annie Brown. But Mine Eyes Have Seen is more than just Annie's story. It is also John Brown's. This dual focus, set against the backdrop of the sweeping social and political upheaval of the times, gives readers a broader vision of the period than Rinaldi did in The Second Bend in the River (Scholastic, 1997). An author's note and a bibliography complete the book.?Peggy Morgan, The Library Network, Southgate,
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

John Brown spent the summer before his quixotic 1859 raid on the Harpers Ferry arsenal secretly marshalling men and weapons on a nearby farm, with two women, one his 15-year-old daughter Annie, to keep house and present the appearance of normality to prying eyes. Spinning Annie's character from sparse contemporary accounts, Rinaldi (The Second Bend in the River, p. 63, etc.) fleshes her out as a severe young woman who shares her driven father's strong-mindedness, loving and hating him with equal intensity. Aware of her father's few successes and many failures in life, Annie watches him and the two dozen followers he gathers come to terms with the fact that many of them are about to die. The author sticks closely to the record, inventing few if any characters or events (although Brown anachronistically refers to his band as ``Young Turks''); Annie recalls her family's struggles and her father's exploits as an anti-slavery militant in Kansas, then describes the Harpers Ferry raid in bitter, clinical, death-by-death detail. There are parallels here with modern episodes of vigilantism, but the author's real focus is on a daughter's relationship with her iconic father, and in the end she becomes his witness. It's a powerful story, and for readers who find the large cast hard to keep track of, Rinaldi recapitulates in an afterword, and appends a bibliography. (Fiction. 12-15) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gr. 8^-12. Rinaldi begins with an actual person, John Brown's daughter, Annie, and weaves fact and fiction into an involving story. The book opens in the Alcott house in Massachusetts where Louisa May encourages Annie to write down the thoughts that trouble her, but the focus shifts immediately to Annie's account of the summer of 1859, which she spent watching for strangers and doing housework in the little house near Harper's Ferry that served as her father's secret headquarters. Annie emerges as a complicated and sympathetic figure, but her position on the periphery of the action makes the book's focus seem slightly off center. Still, hers is an intriguing point of view, and readers will find this a detailed, informative account of what may have happened at Harper's Ferry. Rinaldi's appended author's note helps separate fact from fiction. A good, solid choice for fans of Rinaldi's historical fiction. Carolyn Phelan