Gr 8 Up-This engaging title documents 50-year-old Swedish suffragette and novelist Fredrika Bremer's three-month travels around Cuba in 1851. Based in the home of a wealthy sugar planter, Bremer journeys around the country with her host's teenaged slave Cecilia, who longs for her mother and home in the Congo. Elena, the planter's privileged 12-year-old daughter, begins to accompany them on their trips into the countryside. Both Elena and Cecilia are inspired by their guest's independence, Elena to wonder if she can avoid eventual marriage and Cecilia to dream of freedom for her unborn child. Using elegant free verse and alternating among each character's point of view, Engle offers powerful glimpses into Cuban life at that time. Along the way, she comments on slavery, the rights of women, and the stark contrast between Cuba's rich and poor. The author takes some license with the real Bremer's journey; Elena is fictional, which the author is careful to point out in her author's note. She also includes a reference list for readers who want to learn more about Bremer. The easily digestible, poetic narrative makes this a perfect choice for reluctant readers, students of the women's movement, those interested in Cuba, and teens with biography assignments. Leah J. Sparks, formerly at Bowie Public Library, MD

Engle spins her latest historical novel-in-verse from the actual diaries of a 19th-century suffragette, Fredrika Bremer, who jettisoned her privileged existence in Sweden to travel and take notes on the plight of the poor. In 1851 Cuba, Bremer was assisted by another real-life figure, Cecilia, a pregnant African slave assigned as her translator by Bremer's host, a sugar baron. A third character is invented—Elena, the merchant's 12-year-old daughter who, through her interaction with Fredrika and Cecilia, grows aware of systemic injustice and her power to do something about it. As in her other novels, Engle (<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">The Surrender Tree) writes in free verse, alternating among the characters' perspectives. Cecilia's story is the most poignant: Her father gave her to kidnappers in exchange for a stolen cow, and her unborn child also faces becoming a slave. But it's Elena who gives the plot momentum with a bold and risky choice that signals her own transformation. This slim, elegant volume opens the door to discussions of slavery, women's rights, and the economic disparity between rich and poor. Ages 10–up. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Mar.)

Three women, their lives circumscribed by their societies' expectations, come together in Cuba in 1851. Fredrika Bremer, an advocate for women's rights, escapes her confining upper-class life in Sweden by traveling the world. Cecilia, an enslaved teenager longing for her African home, lives with the knowledge that her father exchanged her for a stolen cow. And 12-year-old Cubana Elena feels trapped in her wealthy existence, she and her mother moving "like shadows / lost in their private world / of silk and lace." The free-verse novel effectively alternates the voices of the three protagonists (with a fourth voice for Beni, Cecilia's husband) and demonstrates how each character affects the others, all learning a measure of freedom in their roaming the island, Fredrika always recording her observations in letters and diaries by the light of Cuban fireflies resting on her fingers. And like the firefly light, Engle's poetry is a gossamer thread of subtle beauty weaving together three memorable characters who together find hope and courage. Another fine volume by a master of the novel in verse. (historical note, author's note) (Historical fiction. 10 & up)

As in The Poet Slave of Cuba (2006) and The Surrender Tree (2008), Engle draws on little-known Cuban history to tell a stirring, immediate story in poetry. Based on the diaries and letters of Swedish suffragist Fredrika Bremer, who spent three months in Cuba in 1851, this title focuses on oppressed women, the privileged as well as the enslaved, in three alternating free-verse narratives. Fredrika remembers that back home in Sweden, she was kept hungry so that she would grow up to be thin and graceful. Her savvy translator is Cecilia, a teenage slave who remembers being captured in the Congo when she was eight years old and sold to a trader by her own father. Elena is a fictional character, a privileged girl in a slave-owning family who is forced into a life filled with "frilly dresses and ornate dance steps" that allows her little freedom. Through this moving combination of historical viewpoints, Engle creates dramatic tension among the characters, especially in the story of Elena, who makes a surprising sacrifice.