Julian and Portia, our young heroes, are from distinctly upper-middle-class backgrounds. Minnehaha and Pindar were children there in the 1890s barely touched on, but perceptible, is the intervening transformation of America, physically and culturally, by war, depression, and economic expansion. Tarrigo, the name the lake had when it existed, was an extravagant summer resort for the rich of several American states. In Enright's, a community is left high and dry when a dam is built too little water proves as destructive as too much. In Yolen's book, a community disappears underwater when a dam is built. (The key achievement in the book is a building of a bridge, both literally and symbolically connecting past to present.)ĭevelopment that effaces a landscape is a haunting theme in other children's books, like Jane Yolen's Letting Swift River Go.
Minnehaha and Pindar are happy, but the world they belonged to has fallen into ruin they need an influx of energy to make Gone-Away Lake habitable again. Happily ever after is where Gone-Away Lake starts from and things only get better.īy this point you may be expecting the book to provoke insulin shock, but it's curiously balanced between lyric and prose. Portia and Julian stumble upon the world where Minnehaha and Pindar live in isolation, self-sufficiency, and complete harmony. People grow old there, but stay childish: Aunt Minnehaha and Uncle Pindar seem to have been 75 forever, and are "well-preserved" at one point the children simply conclude that the old sister and brother will live forever, or near enough. (There's also a sequel, Return to Gone-Away, which I know nothing about.)īut Gone-Away Lake is a type of Neverland. Dangers are few adults are present and never in conflict with children, and there's a happy ending.
But with key differences: Gone-Away Lake is neither supernatural nor ultimately fraught. Gone-Away Lake also resembles enchanted realms in other books like Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting. Gone-Away Lake resembles Katherine Paterson's later classic Bridge to Terabithia: boy and girl share a secret realm in the woods, away from family supervision. Cousin-protagonists Julian and Portia discover a world preserved in time, and learn to appreciate the past by becoming physically steeped in its presence. That her 1957 Newbery Honor novel Gone-Away Lake is now dated doesn't detract from its appeal, because it is a book about how things become dated. Lection home authors titles dates links aboutĮlizabeth Enright was a much-honored 20th-century writer of genteel background (she was the niece of Frank Lloyd Wright) and considerable talent.
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