Captive thunder

by Beverly Butler

Unable to reach an understanding with her mother, a seventeen-year-old girl runs away to her aunt's in Milwaukee where she becomes an unwilling volunteer on Project Head Start.

205 pages, Unknown Binding

First published June 1, 1969

About the author

Also known as
Beverly K. Olsen
Was married to Theodore Victor Olsen

Beverly was a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and a long time resident of Rhinelander. Beverly had planned to be an artist, but an impending blindness impelled her to learn typing in order to rejoin her high school class. For practice, she began typing remembered stories which led to her inventing stories.
In 1954, she graduated cum laude from Mount Mary College in Milwaukee where she wrote her first young novel, Song of the Voyager which later won Dodd Mead's
Seventeenth Summer Literary Competition. Beverly earned her M.A. Degree from Marquette University in 1961 and she returned to Mount Mary in 1962 to teach writing there until 1974. Beverly moved to Sun Prairie before marrying fellow Wisconsin author, Theodore Victor (T.V.) Olsen, and moving to Rhinelander in 1976. T V Olsen died in 1993 and she continued to live
in Rhinelander till her death in 2007 at the age of 75. She is survived by her niece and nephews. Her novel "Light a Single Candle" was based on her own experiences with blindness. The sequel was "Gift of Gold". She used her other senses and her brilliant imagination to create her vivid stories which are still enjoyed by her loyal readers today.

Sources
http://www.memorialsolutions.com/site...
http://underalilacbush.blogspot.in/20...
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid...

Reviews

[Ms. Yingling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Personal collection

Nancy Essen HAS to get out of town and away from her washed out, overbearing mother. She knows! She just turned 17, so she'll marry Wayne! Well, they don't even make it out of town, but since her mother thinks "He's dirty, lazy, stupid, a sponger, a cheat, and a coward. He's the town no-good. His own family won't have him around.", maybe it's just as well. An even better plan; even though she hasn't seen her father in fifteen years, she'll go live with him in San Francisco. Wait. He's not there anymore. Off to poor Aunt Barbara's in Milwaukee it is, then. Nancy takes off a week before her junior year exams. Who needs school anyway? Certainly not Wayne. Aunt Barbara is lovely and a little sad, since her husband Matt passed away a year ago. She is a teacher, but spends her summers working with a Head Start program in the inner city, working with children who might be ESL but have parents who are struggling. Barbara volunteers Nancy to work as a volunteer, along with Earline, who is the first Negro Nancy has ever met. They deal with a number of problem children, including one boy who is assumed to be "mentally retarded" but is hard of hearing, and his mother, who is 20, has 8 children and didn't catch this. Earline has a boy who gives her trouble, but he is killed in a stolen car, and Wayne comes to Milwaukee looking for Nancy and shows his true colors. Nancy's father shows up briefly and is super creepy, so he's not her ticket out. Eventually, a plan evolves where Nancy can take her exams and stay with her aunt.

Strengths: Butler consulted (future author) Betty Ren Wright, who worked at a Head Start program, when writing this book! I'm a big fan of the sending-teens-to-relatives story that was prevalent during this time. Head Start would have been very new. Nancy and her father have dinner at Top of the Marine, which is no longer in business. Very typical of the overwrought attitude of young teens getting married.
Weaknesses: Father is super creepy and keeps talking about how people think Nancy is his date. Wayne doesn't want to let Earline ride in his car because she is black, but Nancy kicks him out because of this. The attitude towards the parents of the Head Start children seemed somewhat condescending.
What I really think: My vintage teen fiction collection is primarily pre-1965, so I may take this to school so that students can check it out for the 1960s project. I love Butler's Light a Single Candle, but this one wasn't a favorite.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books where the teenage girl thinks she knows everything and that her mother just does not understand her. Then she quits school and runs away- not far, just to her aunt's apartment, where she gets a volunteer job with Head Start helping underprivileged children and she matures immensely. As I was reading it I was looking at it through the eyes of a 17 year-old and thinking that I had those same thoughts at 17. But my mind, that of a mature adult, could see the mistakes she was making. I kept thinking "No, Nancy, you do not want to do that!" By the end of the book, even though she wouldn't admit that her mother was right about many things, she gained the wisdom to see it for herself. I enjoyed this book.