Saving Lucas Biggs (MG sci-fi), by Marisa de los Santos and David Teague, has been on my reading list for a while. I listened to half of this one on audio book and then read the rest of it, because I found it hard to jot down notes and locate quotes when I was only listening to the audio. And because there were so many passages I wanted to highlight, I had to switch to the hard copy version.
The story begins in a compelling way: with a trial and a guilty verdict. We learn early on that the trial is for 13-year-old Margaret’s father, and, also, that he didn’t commit the crime. This immediately sets up a reason for readers to continue reading. What’s going to happen to her father? Will Margaret be able to save him?
Not only that, but the judge who proclaims the guilty verdict and the impending death sentence is named Judge Biggs. Because he shares the same name as the title, the title becomes another reason readers keep reading—is he Lucas Biggs? Why does he need to be saved?
The story flips back and forth from the perspective of Margaret, who lives in present day, to Josh, who lives in 1938, when Judge Biggs was a young boy. Margaret, who can time travel, tries to prevent her father’s sentence by preventing the chain of events that caused Judge Biggs to become who he is today.
The only problem is, history is trying to work against her.
What I loved most about this book is that it told a story of innocence and good that was corrupted by power and disappointment. It told the story of a boy who was enticed to act outside of who he was because of circumstances that felt too painful for him to bear. It told the story of good and evil in a way that showed evil is not born evil but sometimes comes about due to circumstances or ignorance or desperation.
The authors crafted their two different voices beautifully. Here is Josh, talking about a miner’s strike and a subsequent massacre:
“After the massacre, our job was to keep Canvasburg alive, because if we left, or starved, or froze in the fall wind that’d started cascading down Mount Hosta, everything that’d happened to us would disappear into thin air, and everybody who’d died would’ve died for nothing.”
He’s a valiant child, one who believes in what the miners are doing, because they’re not treated justly. They must demand justice. He doesn’t think their town will be served by giving up. It’s a very heroic standpoint, after so many died because of what they believed. In spite of fear, he believes the miners are right to keep fighting for what they believe.
Here’s a descriptive passage from Josh:
“Fall kept falling, and the desert nights grew cold. I got to thinking that if we stacked rocks around the edges of our tents to stop the mountain wind from whistling straight through them, then maybe our blankets wouldn’t blow off in the middle of the night while we tried to sleep, leaving us dreaming of glaciers and hugging our knees. What I didn’t foresee was how hard it would actually be to find a rock to pick up. Even one. I mean, the desert around there, the whole shimmering thing, was like a work of art. It should’ve had a guard in a uniform with a sign: Do Not Touch.
“It was perfect. It was beautiful. Red! Green! Yellow!
“Brighter than you ever imagined! Every rock fit into every other rock like the pieces of a mosaic.”
This description endeared me to Josh, because it contains so much hope. That time of year, the desert was a perfect work of art. It was beautiful. Beauty can always be found in even the most dire of circumstances. Josh and his family is camping outside their town, and they don’t have much to eat, and they’ve just lost a bunch of their friends and neighbors, and still he’s able to find beauty in the landscape.
In Josh’s description of his brother’s chronic cough, you hear how much he knows and loves his brother:
“The shadow that fed on Preston’s cough grew like a storm loud over us. ‘I’m not complaining,’ he said one night before bed. And that was true. Preston had a nonstop mouth, but he never used it for complaining. ‘I’m just hungry.’
Josh gives us great characterization of his brother. It’s clear that he cares about his brother and that he is worried about the cough that has come back around, even though it was supposed to get better in the desert.
Here Josh is speaking about the day’s beginning:
“I watched the first sunlight of the day boiling over the desert like a tide of red falling up to drown me. I held my breath, as if that would save me, but I couldn’t go without air forever, and as I breathed again, a ruby crescent peeked over the rim of the world. In seconds, it had grown into a scarlet crown; then it was half an orange globe, and then a yellow ball, huge, glued to the horizon, and thwack, the ball pulled itself loose and floated up into the blue sky, burning whiter as it rose.”
The way he describes the sunrise is captivating; it’s as if I’m watching it with him.
And here Josh is speaking of Margaret, when he sees her for the first time after she’s done her time-traveling thing:
“Suddenly, I spied a girl. I’d never seen this girl before. I’d never seen a girl like this girl before, flitting from tent shadow to tent shadow. She had hair as red as the sunlight that’d just singed my retinas. She had eyes so green, I could see them fifty yards away, and her feet were really large.”
What he chooses to highlight in his description—the green hair that tells him who she’s related to in that small town, the red hair that also gives a hint of this ancestry, the large feet, which is a humorous observation for a boy to make—shows a lot about his personality. He’s curious, trying to figure her out. And of course he had never seen a girl like her before; she was from 70 years in the future.
It’s clear that I felt more drawn to Josh’s voice than Margaret’s, since I didn’t jot down any notes from Margaret’s point of view, but all in all the book was an entertaining read full of adventure and all the themes I love most—family, perseverance and good triumphing over the evil that may not be as evil as we had, at first, thought. Saving Lucas Biggs is a treat for adults and kids alike.
