When Rachel wants to invite her classmate Alice to show her the woods, her Mama tells her to choose her friends wisely lest she end up like her older sister Marion. So Rachel accepts that she can't have friends come to visit. With her dog, Candy, Rachel explores the fields and forests. She loves poetry, especially poems about the sea. Marion finds a job doing bookkeeping while Robert has left to join the Army Air Service.
After a brief illness, Rachel is back in school. Everyone in her class knows someone fighting in Europe. Some have lost relatives in the Battle of Verdun. Meanwhile, Robert is busy transporting bombs on his biplane. His letter relates the story of a Canadian aviator who saved a plane by crawling onto the crushed wing to balance the plane so it could land. Rachel decides she will write a story about this aviator and submit it to the St. Nicholas Magazine. She aspires to be a writer. To encourage her, Rachel's mother leaves her a pocket-sized note book so she can write down the details she notices. Her story is published, five months after submitting it.
Eleven-year-old Rachel is kept home from school as the illness killing soldiers her brother Robert wrote about in his letters, has not spread. The influenza has resulted in limits placed on railroad travel and saloons. Eventually the war ends in the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
Rachel continues to have stories published in St. Nicks and becomes an Honor Member of the Saint Nicholas League. Robert returns home from war but seems changed, unable to focus and sleeping most of the time. Rachel's father gets another job working at the power plant but remains unhappy. And Marion is learning Continental Code from Robert and a friend. She has her picture in the paper but the accompanying story is filled with many made-up details about her which puzzles Rachel. Marion marries Burton Williams, a friend of her brother Robert.
Rachel graduates high school and enrolls at Pennsylvania College for Women, fifteen miles from Sprindale. At school, Rachel finds Miss Croff, her freshman composition teacher very supportive. Meanwhile, Marian's marriage to Burton is failing so she moves back home with her daughter Virginia and her new baby Marjorie. At the end of the semester, Robert also comes to visit with his wife Meredith and their baby, Frances. With all these people in their small home, tensions are high. Eventually Mama tells Robert he can pitch a tent in the yard which they do. Everyone can hear quarreling and crying day and night.
With Marian recovering from appendicitis, her young daughters are needy, wanting comfort. So Rachel helps her sister by taking the children outside to show them interesting things in nature. It is Marjie who seems to enjoy nature the most.
In her sophomore year, Rachel will study French, psychology, Introductory Biology and two English courses. She also decides to work on the school newspaper. Rachel has a new roommate named Helen who is younger. Miss Croff continues as Rachel's advisors, but she is impressed by Miss Skinker, her biology professor. She is glamorous and elegant. Miss Skinker is impressed with Rachel's "probing questions" and that she helps her classmates. She impresses upon Rachel that
"It is not enough
"It is not enough
to embrace knowledge
if we are not also willing
to use that knowledge
to benefit the world."
Rachel soon discovers that she really enjoys biology and it is become her favourite subject. She wants to change her major and seeks the guidance of Miss Croff and Miss Skinker. Miss Croff refuses to advise that she change her major. She tells Rachel there is very little opportunity or women in science and suggests instead that she add a minor in science. Miss Skinker also tells Rachel much the same. She indicates she had been turned away from jobs despite being qualified. She wants Rachel to follow her heart but also to succeed. All of this leaves Rachel discouraged with the fear that she will end up like her mother. Her fellow students are puzzled by Rachel's desire to change her major especially considering she is such a good writer. Rachel's attempt to explain to her friends how she feels is met with laughter.
Summer sees Robert, Meredith and Frances move in with Meredith's family. Rachel's papa is often sick and can only tend his garden. Rachel tells her mother that she wants to change her major but like her teachers, her mother doesn't support this change. Rachel returns to college but early in the semester she decides to move forward with the change in her major. Miss Skinker and Miss Croff tell her they will support her in this. Rachel's move to focus on science rather than her writing will eventually pay off in ways no one can anticipate. As Rachel gains experience in the world of science and returns to her writing, she offers the world the opportunity to reconsider the beauty of the natural world and to reconsider how we are trying to tame that world.
Discussion
In Force of Nature, the life of Rachel Carson is fictionalized through the use of free verse. There are no titled poems, but the poetry is interspersed with pages titled Field Note in which Rachel observes the natural world around her. As author Ann E. Burg notes in her Author's Note she "wanted to capture a unique and tenacious spirit" that was Rachel Carson.
Using verse, Burg succeeds in portraying Rachel Carson as an intelligent young woman determined to follow what she truly loved - observing and learning about the natural world we are a part of. In Force of Nature, Rachel is portrayed as not only delighting in the discovering the natural world around her but also in passing that on to those around her, especially her young nieces. Although she begins college studying writing and English, her fascination with the natural world cannot be denied. Despite warnings that studying science would offer few opportunities, Carson persisted, deciding to take an enormous risk. Carson was fortunate to obtain an internship at Woods Hole in Massachusetts and later a position in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, at a time when jobs were rare for women in science.
And as history now shows, she was able to convey the wonders of the natural world to millions of readers through her books. But more importantly Rachel Carson was able to use her love and knowledge of the natural world and her science background to warn the world about the indiscriminate use of pesticides. She correctly foresaw that man's desire to conquer nature could have devastating effects for both the world and humanity. Her book, Silent Spring was the birth of the environmental movement. She accomplished what Miss Skinker had encouraged her to do, years earlier - use her knowledge to benefit mankind.
Burg also conveys the difficulties and tragedies in Rachel Carson's own life. Her mother had to give up a teaching career when she married, something that was common in the early twentieth century. Her father was dissatisfied with low-paying jobs that offered little satisfaction. Her siblings also struggled with neither Robert nor Marion completing high school. Robert returned from a war a changed man, like many of his generation. Her sister Marion had a failed marriage. The family struggled financially during the depression, resulting in Rachel postponing her doctorate studies at John Hopkins. Her father also died during this time making their financial situation worse. The niece Rachel was helping died suddenly leaving her son, Roger an orphan. Rachel had ongoing health problems including breast cancer which would claim her life in 1964.
Force of Nature has lovely illustrations created by artist Sophie Blackall using Procreate, a digital 6B pencil, gouache and brushes. At the back of the book, all the illustrations are shown with the caption, "Can you name them all?" A map showing the important towns and cities relevant to Rachel Carson's life would have been a good addition.
Author Ann E. Burg read Rachel Carson's own works and used Linda Lear's biography, Witness for Nature to help craft Rachel's story in Force of Nature. This novel in verse is a beautiful tribute to a somewhat-forgotten pioneer and scientist in environmental sciences.
Book Details:
Force of Nature by Ann E. Burg
New York: Scholastic Press 2024
New York: Scholastic Press 2024
278 pp.
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