Caleb's Story

Finished Caleb's Story by Patricia MacLachlan. It is the third book in a series of five which began with Sarah, Plain and Tall, which won the Newbery Medal in 1986.

When Caleb is home alone with Sarah and his little sister Cassie during a blizzard he finds a stranger in their barn. He is an old man who is gruff and seems ill. Sarah, always compassionate, invites him into the house. When Papa returns from town he is stunned when he begins to recognize the stranger. The stranger is his father who left when Papa was a boy. Papa is angry that his father has returned after all these years without a word or a letter. Sarah does her best to repair the rift between the two men. All along Caleb is writing about these events in the journal that his older sister has given him.

Caleb is very observant and after a while he begins to realize that his grandfather cannot read. In secret Caleb teaches his grandfather to read and write. His grandfather then writes the letter to his son that he was never able to write before.

I enjoyed this book. It was very brief and even though it has been years since I read Sarah, Plain and Tall and Skylark, it was very easy to drop back into the lives of these characters.