The House of Forgetting

Saenz, B. (1997). The House of Forgetting. Harper Collins Publishers.

Seven year old Gloria Santos was kidnapped by Thomas Blacker a stranger she accepted a ride with one day and relocated her out from a small El Paso community to Chicago. Gloria is raised by Blacker for twenty years and her captor redefines all she knew as a child. She learns to appreciate literature, music and cooking. She is not allowed out of the house, only occasionally when Blanker decides it is safe. Gloria enters womanhood believing she must serve in life, and to love means to obsess and control with fear. As she grows older, she becomes aware of her situation and struggles to distinguish between what she has been taught is love and what she believes could be obsession. She gathers up all her courage to confront the man who has taken her captive and fights to free herself. She then experiences becoming readjusted to the outside world, a world she barely knew as a child. Gloria’s character is one that readers particularly students might find themselves not understanding at first. Despite her captor’s actions, she manages to still become a kind and caring toward him. This is a wonderful opportunity for character analysis in the classroom. To cause students to ask why and how Gloria’s circumstances still made room for positive moral development. I recommend this book to be used for upper grades 11 and higher. Students operating in the post-conventional stage of moral development will understand the issues in this book the best.