"When I am grappling with ideas which are radical enough to upset grown-ups, then I am likely to put these ideas into a story which will be marketed for children, because children understand what their parents have rejected and forgotten."
--"Names and Labels," page 110
Chapter 7,
Walking on Water by Madeleine L'Engle

Actually, author Erika Johansen would disagree with me for leading with this L'Engle quote. Johansen has remarked in a published interview that her fantasy books about a place called "The Tearling" were written as she wanted to write them, and has insisted that she did not write in order to limit herself to the "Young Adult / YA" category. A future post may link to that Johansen interview, since it is online.

In any event, Johansen's fantasy, a series of three books, about "The Tearling" were inspired when The Daily Show, in 2007, had presidential candidate, then-Senator Barack Obama, as a guest, as Johansen has also emphasized in reviews since then. Therefore, these books, however entertaining and emotional in appeal, have got an underlying social consciousness, and they pose as many questions as they supply answers.

There is too much of interest about these books to squeeze into one thread! I just finished reading the concluding book, which arrived in bookstores about the time of the 2016 presidential election. So "The Fate of The Tearling," the concluding book in the series, has only been out for a few months.

The most outspoken readers of these books have indeed been young adults, and they formed expectations that this long and complex narrative about a nineteen-year-old young lady would be an adventure along the lines of the Divergent series or The Hunger Games series. And guess what....that isn't how it ends. NO SPOILERS, now. Johansen has said of the conclusion: "It broke my heart, but I had to do it." The online reviews by readers and fans have been mainly shocked and outraged: how DARE the author do this to her characters, how dare the author do this to her readers!

Speaking strictly for me, I am in awe of the author's risk-taking. She has chosen an ending that confounds popular expectations, and takes one back to the conflict between entertainment and social consciousness. And in future posts it will be food for thinking out loud some more. Has anyone else read these books?