Julie Chibbaro

Selected reviews of REDEMPTION from Newsday, Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, Kliatt, Teenreads.com, Booklist, Hornbook

From Newsday:
Julie Chibbaro's novel of pre-Colonial America imagines how mysterious and terrifying the New World must have been, especially to people who did not choose of their own free will to explore it. Lily and her mother are forced onto a boat sailing from England for the New World, virtual slaves of a brutal duke who is using religious dissenters as disposable pawns in a bid to establish a colony. Lily believes that her father was sent on an earlier boat, and she hopes they will find him alive and ready to take them in. They do find him, but it is not the cozy reunion they imagined; he has been adopted by a tribe of natives and has become unrecognizable in every way. Chibbaro's view of the New World as a harsh place is persuasive, and the clash of Old and New World cultures is painted with a great deal of subtlety. The violence of Chibbaro's story is the fire in which a new American character is forged, one that revels in the annihilation of old European class distinctions, that embraces the communal yet warlike spirit of the native people, and that accepts as its family all those who are tough enough to adapt to the New World.
-- Sonja Bolle
© Newsday

From Hornbook:
An ambitious first novel postulates English migration to America in the 1520s--nearly one hundred years before Jamestown. Lily's parents have been harboring a rebel cleric (whose ideas resemble Martin Luther's) when her father, as a "religious protester," is abducted and sent to the New World. Hoping to find him, Lily and her mother, Sarah, sail after him, only to discover that the avaricious baron who lusts after Sarah is aboard and inescapable. The ship sinks on arrival; tensions of village and voyage persist, with the addition of conflicting native tribes, the "Nooh" and the "Awthas." Adopting Lily and her friend Ethan (the baron's son), the Nooh join them in a doomed quest for Sarah, who has herself been abducted. Chibbaro, who has done her historical homework well, vivifies the book with inspired descriptions (the ship is "shaped like a huge wooden smile. A rot-black smile like the beadle's"). Flashbacks, memories, dreams, and visions complicate and enrich Lily's narrative, while her devout search for religious truth is propelled by extremes of experience: loss, betrayal, savage cruelty, unexpected blessings, idyllic love. A superfluous episode involving rapacious pirates stretches the bounds of coincidence; still, this engrossing adventure is both beautifully written and thought-provoking, an arresting portrayal of feudal society's earliest confrontation with the Reformation.
-- J.R.L.
© Hornbook

From Kirkus Review:
Twelve-year-old Lily and her mother are forced off their English land by the baron's men. Her father has been missing for many months now, and they are to seek safety from religious persecution in passage to the New World. But all is not what it seems, and the nightmarish voyage, the evil baron and Lily's loss of innocence on board the ship are just the beginning of Lily's travails. When the ship literally crashes into the New World and breaks apart on the rocks, Lily and the baron's son Ethan go ashore and begin a new life there. Set in the early 1500s, Chibbaro's debut explores the early settling of America, with Europe's transition from Renaissance to Reformation as the backdrop. Chibbaro writes colorfully, and the monstrous baron, religious dissenters, the Atlantic crossing, and the early meetings of Europeans and northeast woodlands Indians, well before Jamestown in 1607, offer a fascinatiing look at a little-known side of American history (historical note, author's note, bibliography.)
© kirkus

From Chronogram:
Columbus discovered the New World in 1492, and it wasn't until 1603 that the first successful American colony was established in Jamestown, Virginia. So what happened in the intervening years? Curiosity about this sparsely documented gap fueled the writing of Redemption, first-time author Julie Chibbaro's gripping young adult novel.
Against the backdrop of the early 16th century lives 12-year-old Lily, the sole child of English peasants who are followers of Frere Lanther, a Martin Luther-like Protester against the Church of England. Religious differences with their landlord, "the baron," force Lily's father onto a ship bound for the New World, and eight months later, Lily and her mother follow to find him. But all is not as it seems - the baron boards their ship as well, and he's darkly obsessed with Lily's mother. The wretched voyage is saved only by the discovery of an unexpected ally in Ethan, the baron's son. Unfortunately, the colonists have barely made land when a gruesome discovery leads Lily to think her father has been killed. When rebellious sailors kidnap her mother, Lily heads desperately into the forest to hunt them down. Her trek becomes a journey of self in which she encounters new friends, familiar savages, and the beginnings of a quest for her own spiritual truth.
Chibbaro is apparently a research buff, but historical detail informs her storytelling without overwhelming it. Chibbaro paints this crude, cruel world in full Sensaround; the people are smelly and bug-infested, and they are hurt and killed in gruesome ways. Her immediate first person narration plunges the reader into this place of dark woods - a bit too realistically, perhaps, for young adult readers on the squeamish side. But all of this age group's major emotional hot points are present: the struggle toward and away from parents, the first stirrings of love, the rising sense of self-definition.
The Jamestown settlers reportedly came upon bands of fair-haired natives they called "white Indians" - descendants, it's supposed, of colonists who were absorbed by local tribes. We may never really know what happened back then, but Julie Chibbaro's Redemption offers a stirring and heartfelt imagining.
-- Susan Krawitz
©Chronogram

From Booklist:
Set in the early sixteenth century before colonists settled in North America, this ambitious first novel tells the story of Lily, 12, who flees religious persecution in England. She boards a ship to follow her banished father to the New World, where eventually she finds home and family with an Indian tribe in the northeast forests. Chibbaro works in a huge amount of historical background that will be new to most readers, but Lily's immediate present-tense narrative makes the drama personal: the religious conflict and betrayal that drove her beloved father from England; the horror of the voyage (including the sexual abuse of her mother); the shipwreck and landing in the New World, where she finds both kindness and unspeakable savagery among Indians and whites. From survival adventure to classical father quest, there's too much coincidence. It's the exciting nonstop action and Lily's spiritual battle with her own guilt and with God that draw readers along. Lily's discovery of a religious community is a powerful climax.
-- Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association.

From School Library Journal:
In 1524, 12-year-old Lily Applegate leaves her small village in England with her mother for the New World. They believe that her father has been sent there as punishment for harboring a Protestant monk. On the crossing, an evil baron takes her mother hostage. Lily befriends his son, and they pursue her mother. Lost in the frightening woods, they are reunited with Lily's father, who is living with the Nooh Indian tribe with a new name and a new wife. As Lily struggles with this discovery, she is put to a final test when she finds her mother dead. Her faith, which had always been so sure and steady, is thrown into great turmoil as she finds herself caught between the survival of the body and survival of the spirit. Chibbaro weaves a fast-paced and engrossing story. While the details of early exploration of the Americas are sketchy at best, the author does her best to fill in the details of the earliest Europeans to arrive in the Americas. The historical elements are well done, and the author paints a vivid picture of the living conditions on a ship, and then the Europeans' fears when they arrive in a strange and unforgiving land. While this story is engaging and exciting, the vocabulary and themes are sophisticated. This absorbing read will appeal to older teens who have a thirst for adventure and historical fiction.
–Anna M. Nelson, Seabrook Library, NH

From KLIATT:
This is serious historical fiction written by a first-time novelist who immerses her readers in 16th-cntury English religious wars and brings her pilgrims to the New World where some of them are saved by Native Americans. This is decades before the Mayflower and the history that all American schoolchildren study, but based on historical accounts unearthed by Chibbaro in her extensive research. She discovered evidence of numerous voyages to the New World in the century after Columbus's "discovery" in 1492, and even references to white-skinned Indians by later colonists to Virginia. Chibbaro creates a story about these white-skinned Indians.
Her tale begins in England with a mother and daughter persecuted for their Protestant beliefs. To avoid death they choose to go on a ship bound for the New World. Lily's father had invited a Protestant minister from the Netherlands to their community, and now her father is gone, believed to be dead. The journey is perilous, especially because the very man who persecutes them is also on the journey, the baron: This man demands Lily's mother's presence in his bed. The filth, illnesses and suffering are described in great detail, and readers certainly can imagine themselves on the ship too.
The next segment of the story involves Lily's meeting Native Americans in the wilderness, after she has escaped from the camp of the evil baron. The details of the trek through the forests and the customs of the Indians encountered are marvelous. Weaker is the plot at this point, which depends on a rather miraculous meeting of Lily with the father she had believed dead. The evil baron's son Ethan is not like his father, and he becomes a companion to Lily; the story ends with the promise that these two will stay with the Indians and perhaps be the forebears of those white-skinned Indians that so fascinate Chibbaro.
Not every YA reader will be willing to adapt to the patterns of speech of these 16th-century characters, nor to the intricacies of their world. But those who are able will be richly rewarded.
-- Claire Rosser
© KLIATT

From TeenReads.com:
In 1524 England, twelve-year-old Lily hasn't felt warm since the baron's men dragged her father away eight months ago. She pictures him dead. However, Frere Lanther, who has come from the Rhineland to lead his own secret and forbidden church, suggests Lily's father may well be alive in the New World. The baron is forcing Lily and her mother to leave their home, which he owns. When Lily begs her mother to accompany her to the New World to find her father, her mother reluctantly agrees.
The voyage is miserably cramped and filthy. A live pig lives in the room where the poor passengers eat their meals of watery soup and insect-ridden black bread. Lily meets the baron's son, Ethan, onboard and inadvertently blurts that Frere Lanther lives with them. When Lily's mother is raped, Lily is heartsick. She knows her mother's punishment was a direct result of Lily's exposing her family's secret.
A shipwreck upon the shores of the New World ends the voyage. The castaways stumble upon a gruesome discovery, which increases Lily's fear that her father is dead. When her mother is kidnapped, Lily must set off alone through the forest, starving and terrified. What she finds in the forest is astonishing.
Multilayered REDEMPTION is truly unique. Lily's story is a harrowing physical and spiritual quest laden with mystery, filled with unexpected plot twists. The tale is harsh, violent and gruesome --- not for anyone wanting to view history through a rosy haze. Yet the book is also vibrant, riveting and beautifully written. Lily herself is a believable, sympathetic character surviving devastation after devastation.
If you love history, you'll enjoy this powerful piece of historical fiction. If you snoozed through history class (as I did), you'll love REDEMPTION for a fascinating read that may even turn you --- yes, YOU! --- into a history buff.
-- Terry Miller Shannon
©Teenreads