![]() ![]() Etta writes to Otto, offering a lifeline of feeling through words, letters to which he desperately clings. Otto’s letters and flashbacks to his wartime experience offer some of Hooper’s most poignant illustrations of trauma’s living memories, and the effects of combat violence. Both vie for Etta’s attention, but when war in Europe breaks out, Otto leaves his heart behind in order to cross the ocean and fight. “I will try to remember to come back,” she wrote Otto, but with each step she takes toward the coast, her mind begins to blur with memories of the past, and the early days with Otto and Russell.Įtta arrived as a teacher to the dusty plains the boys called home, although with the state of country schooling mid-Depression, she found in her students her only same-age companions: Otto, hardworking sibling to 14 and his best friend, Russell, an only child permanently disabled from a teenage farming accident. But starting from her home in rural Saskatchewan means it’s a journey of more than 3,000 kilometers, and Etta isn’t always herself these days. One morning she decides to rise early, leaves a note for her husband, Otto, and sets out on foot toward the sea. In the case of Etta-the first titular character in Emma Hooper’s transporting debut novel, ETTA AND OTTO AND RUSSELL AND JAMES-it’s both.Įighty-three-year-old Etta has never seen the ocean. ![]() An editor once told me that all great stories are essentially one of two plots: someone goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town. ![]()
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