Point of View

The Prologue of the novel is told by a third-person narrator so that Wingate can create uncertainty about the time period in which the Prologue is taking place. Is the student to whom the teacher is talking the real Hannie Gossett, the one who will narrate her story of being separated from her family? The description of the old- fashioned clothes and the fact the students are “leaning over crooked tables littered with nib pens, blotters, and inkwells” (3) makes it appear the students are one from the 1800s. It is only when the reader reaches the “Epilogue,” narrated in the first-person by Benny, that he realizes that the Prologue was set in 1987. The students are pretending to be in an old-fashioned makeshift, outdoor school as part of a living history project.

The bulk of the novel is told by two different first-person narrators, Hannie and...