Willow Creek Summer

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Although Kathleen Wiebe’s first young-adult novel explores some
typical teen concerns, such as fitting in, what sets it apart from the
average adolescent family-problem novel is its unusual cultural setting.


Tina Wiens, 15, lives with her sister Mary Anne, 18, and their parents,
Alma and Werner, in the largely Mennonite community of Homer, located in
Niagara’s Golden Horseshoe, where Tina attends Canaan Christian
College, a strict Mennonite private school. Although the book begins in
February, flashbacks take readers first to November, when Mary Anne
tells Tina of her pregnancy, and then to the previous summer, when Mary
Anne met the baby’s father, Benedict Henry, a West Indian “darky”
temporarily working in the neighboring orchards. In the severe Mennonite
community, the unwed Mary Anne brings “shame” on the family.
Alma’s reaction to the church’s uncompromising response is to cease
attending services, but Tina continues to accompany her father. However,
both at school and in church, Tina feels like an outsider because she
can’t see “how to get Jesus into [her] heart.” Tina is also at the
age where she recognizes the adult world’s hypocrisy, especially as
expressed in “religion” (“The orderly rows of pews in our church
hid a tangled crooked world behind”), and she repeatedly hints at her
own dark secret (“I had memories hidden away in secret shaded spots
where I didn’t dare look”). Finally, during a wonderful summer spent
with her great-aunt, Tina reveals that her paternal grandfather had
molested her.

Willow Creek Summer is highly recommended.