Paddock Lake, Wisconsin was a great big closet for me. It's a nice enough place. Nothing particularly special about it, and when I was little, I got a lot of joy out of riding its streets on my bicycle, cruising down "Killer's Hill", or discovering secret places in its patches of woods, or building secret forts in the cornfields that abutted our neighborhood (until a policeman caught us and put the kibosh on it). But eventually, it was a place that stifled and smothered who I was; a place I knew I had to get away from in order to be myself, even if I didn't know exactly why (though I certainly had an inkling). Some places are just like that. Indigo, Alice Hoffman's 2002 novel for young readers, is about just such a place, and just such an escape.

Martha Glimmer knows she wasn't made for the town of Oak Grove. In her heart she believes that she was meant to live in the glamorous cities her mother (now dead) used to live in - San Francisco, New York, Paris. She's put off by the smallness of the town, and its deep, widespread fear of water (following a catastrophic flood that nearly washed the town away) - not to mention the gossipy woman who's taken it upon herself to "take care" of Martha's dad - delivering her mushy canned-soup casseroles and just generally sticking her nose where it doesn't belong. Because of her, Martha doesn't even feeling comfortable in her own house.

So she hangs out with the two McGill boys next door. Like Martha, the McGill boys know deep down that they are different - certainly not meant for a town as emphatically dry as Oak Grove. In a place where there are no swimming pools, and even bathtubs have been replaced by showers - such is the extent of the townspeople's phobia - the McGill boys dream of being underwater, and long to see and smell and taste the ocean. When they drink water, they fill it with salt. For dessert, instead of chocolate cake, they prefer pies made of seaweed and sardines. People make fun of them, calling them Trout and Eel, because of their webbed hands and feet and there emerald green eyes that never seem to blink. For the McGills, escaping from Oak Grove isn't just a fantasy - it's an imperative - though they have no clue why. And one night - just as the biggest storm to hit Oak Grove in years is starting to brew - the two boys and Martha devise a scheme to run away together to the ocean.

Indigo is a charming, compact story - we read it aloud in a single sitting - imbued with both the mysterious whimsy and the dark, psychological shadows of a fairytale. The characters and setting are only outlined enough to tell the story, so its easy for us to put ourselves in their place. Oak Grove, for me, looks just like Paddock Lake - but could just as easily be Sturtevant, or Wheatland, or Walworth, or [insert name of your town here]. The print is large and widely spaced and the language is easy for younger readers, but the story speaks to parents as well. It reminded me that as much as I needed to get away from Paddock Lake, I still love the place, with all its phobias. It's where I'm from, after all.

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MORE ALICE HOFFMAN:

Green Angel (2003)


Recommended: Yes

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