Lost Alongside Isabel

I think for now I've taken a nice, LONG break from posting. A second cycle of ELA writing entries are forcing me to pick up where I left off. Thank you, Ms. Robbins.

In writing, we are working in groups on fiction sub-genres. Mine by choice is historical fiction, which I have not written since fifth grade- though it was probably my best writing of that year.

But anyway, I am for that purpose currently reading Chains, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Though the book is a somewhat easier read than some other things I've read in the past, it lets me become totally engrossed and lost in the words themselves.

So lost that it seems I completely lose track of time whenever I open the book. The words fly off the page, and I absorb them like a sponge. Isabel, the main character in Chains, is a slave during the time of the revolutionary war, working for a secretly loyalist couple with her younger sister Ruth.

At times, Isabel seems to feel lost- whether she's daydreaming as she labors over whatever order Madam has demanded from her, or she's lying in bed at night, dreamimng of home...but really, where is home for her.

The idea of home is pretty much a lost concept to Isabel. The only home she's known is the one of the recently deceased elderly woman her family used to work for. She longs for a nonexistant place...and I truly feel sorry for the poor lost soul.

This made me realize how fortunate I am, and the people I know are. I could have easily been born in the place of some one in Isabel's situation. For some people, the word and concept of home is as it is to Isabel: foreign.