Jacob have I loved Book

I read this book several times as a teen. I was drawn to the story of the two sisters. I found myself both disturbed and fascinated by the cleft between them, and nursed Sarah Louise's injustices as if they were my own. I was also captivated by the beautiful imagery and the setting along the Chesapeake Bay that was, to me, strange and fascinating.

Recently I returned to the book, reading it for the first time as an adult. It was a completely different experience. It became a story about how we perceive ourselves, and how intricately that is linked to how we believe we are perceived by others. I saw how Sarah Louise's perception of reality becomes what is real to her. It shapes the decisions she makes, how she defines herself, how she relates to her sister.

As a teen reader, I failed to see the growth and resolution that come into Sarah Louise's life when she learns to set aside her perceptions and accept what is the truth. Once she finally listens to the Captain telling her, "You don't need anything given to you," and then accepts her parent's love for what it really is, she is free to leave her island home and find herself, and her destiny.

Destiny might seem a strong word to use. Sarah Louise herself is furious when Joseph Wojtkiewicz suggests that her arrival in the mountain-locked Appalachian community she eventually calls home has been predestined. But there is a wholeness and beauty to Sarah Louise's life, a calmness and completeness that is unmistakable. And echoing that is the cycle of life and death that is repeated in the images of the crabs, in the story Sarah Louise's birth, and in the death and life that occur in the book's final scenes.

I think Patterson expects a lot from her teen readers. As the story begins, an adult Sarah Louise acknowledges, "Life begins to turn upside down at thirteen. I know that now." That is not something I could have understood as I teenager, at least not with the same perspective as Sarah Louise. I was still there. Now it is different. Now I read those words and feel a pang in my chest because I know how true they are. But I'm glad I had the experience of reading this book both as a teenager and as an adult. It made Sarah Louise's story more meaningful and poignant to be able to see it both as she experienced it, and as she processed it later in life.