Fox's Nose

Lori A. Dunn is a teacher, instructional designer, and freelance writer
in New Westminster, British Columbia.

At the family farm in the interior of British Columbia, 14-year-old
Julie, daughter of a Russian immigrant, discovers her grandmother’s
diary lying forgotten in the attic. The diary, which was painstakingly
translated by Julie’s aunt years ago, recounts the Siege of Leningrad.
As Julie reads this found treasure, her life becomes infused with the
flavor of the Leningrad Siege. As we read the diary along with Julie, we
feel the shadows of the war flow into her troubled teenaged world. She
senses the parallels as she deals with her own wars—with herself, with
her friend, and with her father’s illness.

Fox’s Nose is a story of hopeful maturity in the face of real-life
difficulties. Julie’s growth through the year mirrors the battles and
trials, both metaphoric and real, of the Siege. She even re-creates some
of them in a play she writes for school—a story within a story that
reflects the troubles she is having with her German girlfriend. Her
wheelchair-bound father finds love again, and she is able to mentally
reconstruct her relationship with her “fine, elegant, remote,
calculating” mother, an actress in Europe who has returned to Canada
to visit Julie. In the end, having escaped from her teenaged bitterness,
Julie realizes that she has survived—if not unscathed, then at least
changed for the better.

Sally Ireland has found the voice that echoes inside a teenager’s
head, in that time when everything is awkward and mysterious, and peer
pressure is at its height. She deals with difficult issues like death
and teen sex without moralizing and without embarrassment. Fox’s Nose
will linger in the reader’s mind for a long time.