Category Archives: Hostetter, Joyce Moyer

Joyce Moyer Hostetter. Comfort. Honesdale, PA: Calkins Creek, 2009.

The year is 1945 in this sequel to Hostetter’s earlier novel, Blue.  Ann Fay has returned from treatment in a polio hospital and her beloved father is back from the war.  Ann Fay thinks that she understands the changes that occurred at home during the war–the deprivation, the polio epidemic that killed her younger brother and disabled her–but she has no understanding of what her father went through.  Her father suffers from what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder.  Ann Fay and her father are both in search of healing and peace of mind–“comfort”.   Ann Fay is helped on her path by caring neighbors and treatment at the Warm Springs, Georgia polio treatment center.  Her father’s healing path is lonelier and the outcome uncertain.

Comfort touches on themes of family, community, racial prejudice, and social class, but the novel never bogs down in any way.  Ann Fay’s voice rings true in this beautiful coming-of-age story.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2009, Catawba, Children & Young Adults, Hostetter, Joyce Moyer, Piedmont

Joyce Moyer Hostetter. Blue. Honesdale, Penn.: Boyds Mills Press, 2006.

In this book for younger readers, thirteen year old narrator Ann Fay Honeycutt describes life in Hickory during World War II. When Ann Fay’s father goes to fight in the war, he leaves her in charge of the family. She trades in playing and climbing trees for the grown-up responsibilities of tending the vegetable garden and taking charge of her younger siblings. When a polio epidemic hits her town and she is stricken with the disease, Honeycutt is hospitalized and becomes close friends with another patient, an African American girl her age. The novel is based on the true story of a hospital for polio patients in Hickory in the 1940s.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC Library Catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Catawba, Children & Young Adults, Historical, Hostetter, Joyce Moyer, Piedmont