Author: Jeanne DuPrau
Audience: Grades 4-8
In a Nutshell: find a home, fall in love, help the world
Nickie's great-grandfather just died, leaving the family's huge old mansion in the small town of Yonwood, North Carolina, to her mom and aunt. The house is so old it has a name: Greenhaven. Nickie's aunt, Crystal, just wants to clean it up and sell it as soon as possible, and Nickie comes along to help. She also has three goals of her own: 1. To convince her aunt not to sell Greenhaven so that she and her mom and dad can live there, out of the dangerous city; 2. To fall madly, passionately in love- not forever, just for now, to see what it's like; 3. To do something helpful for the world. She sees her chance to do #3 when she hears about the Prophet. Several months back, a woman in town had a fiery, frightening vision of the future, and now she's half-delirious in bed, muttering confusing things that a few prominent town members (like Mrs. Beeson) interpret and pass on as God's will to the rest of the people. With the President on television nearly every day warning of an imminent war with the extremist "Phalanx Nations," people are all too willing to believe a vision of fiery doom, and they do whatever Mrs. Beeson tells them to do in the hopes that they can prevent the coming disaster and destruction. Nickie tries to help Mrs. Beeson do good by reporting people who might have evil tendencies, but she soon realizes that it's not as easy as judging appearances and first impressions to decide who's good and who's eeevil. To mix things up, throw in a cute stray dog (good?), a new friend who loves snakes (evil?), a mysterious white-clad "terrorist" wandering the woods, and a secret message hidden in postcards from her father. Nickie reaches all three goals, but not how or when she expected.
This book was disappointing; all the more so because I love the first book, The City of Ember, and the sequel, The People of Sparks. Prophet is presented as the Third Book of Ember, prequel-style, but the connection is pretty slim. The author threw in a lot of wrap-up and tie-in facts in the final chapter, almost like she hit her page quota and resorted to summary. The story quickly gets bogged down in message and metaphor, mostly related to the current state of the post-9/11 world. Not that war, fear, safety vs. freedom, and questions of religion and who really knows God's will aren't perfectly good topics to tackle, but the approach here gets too heavy-handed. It hampered my attempt to enjoy the story and characters apart from The Lesson To Be Learned. I don't like being hampered.
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