Saturday, the Twelfth of October by Norma Fox Mazer

First published: 1975

Type of work: Fantasy

Themes: Coming-of-age, social issues, and family

Time of work: The 1970’s and the Stone Age

Recommended Ages: 13-15

Locale: New York City and the Community of Cave Dwellers

Principal Characters:

• Zan (Alexandra) Ford, a fourteen-year-old, who crosses a hypothetical bend in the river of time
• Burrum, a girl of Zan’s age, who befriends her in the Stone Age
• Sonte, a strong, proud boy, who is Burrum’s closest childhood friend
• Diwera, the Wai-Wai, or holy woman, of the People
• Hiffaru, her deformed son, to whom Burrum has been promised

The Story

Zan Ford is a sensitive girl who feels crowded in her family’s small apartment; she is frustrated by their lack of communication, wonders at the dirt and congestion of the Manhattan streets, and worries about her own slow and confusing transition into adolescence. When her science teacher presents the concept of time as a river that can be crossed at the curves, Zan’s imagination is sparked, but walking home from school the same day, two boys mug her in the alley. The next day, she is further enraged when she catches her brother, Ivan, reading her diary to two of his friends. In her anger and humiliation, she flees to the safe haven of her special rock in Mechanix Park. There, she is mysteriously transported to the Stone Age; this inexplicable transference into the past lasts for nearly eleven months, during which Zan’s perspective on her own life is dramatically altered.

She is befriended by a girl, Burrum, and a boy, Sonte, of her own age and accepted into Burrum’s cave-dwelling family. She is confused and frightened by her apparent inability to return home, and at first, she rejects the warmth of their overtures toward her. Gradually, Zan adapts to their life and their language. The objects she carries in her pocket—a button, a key, a safety pin, and a knife—are subjects of great curiosity to the People. Only Diwera senses that Zan’s presence among them is dangerous, while the others, especially the children, share their food and friendship with her.

The security of life in the Stone Age world, however, begins to crumble when Burrum’s young brother is struck by a serious and inexplicable illness. Diwera, suspicious and fearful of Zan’s presence, pushes her from the cliffs into the raging river in a desperate attempt to free the People of the evil she believes the girl has brought them. Zan survives and makes her way back to the cave of the Burrums, only to find that her possessions have been taken from their secret hiding place. Diwera, upon her return from the river, instructed Hiffaru to throw Zan’s “magical” belongings into the river, but, in his greed, Hiffaru kept the knife. Sonte suspects Hiffaru’s secret and, moved by greed and envy, demands Hiffaru give him the knife and is accidentally killed in the argument. Diwera, spotting Zan in the shadows, and considering her responsible for the violence, flings the knife toward her. Zan runs to the only refuge she knows, and as she throws herself against the rock, she returns to her own time just as mysteriously as she left it.

Zan’s return to her family and transition to her previous life proves to be difficult. Though her time with the People was nearly eleven months, she finds that it is later the same day, Saturday, the twelfth of October, when she returns home. Her story is disbelieved by everyone, and her family sends her to a psychiatrist, who explains her experience as a hysterical delusion brought on by her anger and feelings of violation. Although her family, teachers, and friends cannot understand how she was transformed by these events, the vividness of her other existence still seems very real to Zan. She privately yearns to bring much of the gentleness and openness of the People’s ways into her own ordinary world, hoping to maintain their profound effect on her life.

Context

Saturday, the Twelfth of October was Mazer’s third book for young adults and a true departure for its author in its construction of a complete fantasy world within a realistic story. Critics have noted her experimentation with various prose forms in her subsequent novels and short stories; yet, in each of her works, certain elements of her personal style pervade the writing. Alienation from other people and nature, the impersonality of contemporary life, and the desire to communicate honestly with family or friends are common themes in Mazer’s works, which address familiar problems such as death, divorce, alcoholism, and sexual choices. Like Jenny in A Figure of Speech (1973), who feels alienated from her middle-class family in an overcrowded household, and like Joyce of Mrs. Fish, Ape, and Me, the Dump Queen (1980), who is an outsider with an inner strength, Zan Ford is an independent, intelligent young woman who must respond to the circumstances of her life with self-assurance and integrity.

The tradition of contemporary, realistic novels whose teenage protagonists face unusual problems goes back to Maureen Daly’s Seventeenth Summer (1942), which portrays the adolescent girl’s point of view and takes her problems seriously. Other groundbreaking contributions in this genre include J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951) and S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders (1967), among others. The publication of Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret in 1970 is regarded as one of the initial works in the trend toward stories about girls going through puberty that use frank references to menstruation and sexual encounters. Mazer’s novels and short stories clearly fit into this emerging genre.

As a time-travel fantasy, Saturday, the Twelfth of October has been compared to a latter-day Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), by Lewis Carroll, and, in fact, won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award when it was published. For its attention to realistic detail and sharp character portraits, it is also often compared to such works as Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time (1962) or Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy (1968-1972). Mazer’s believable and thought-provoking combination of realistic and fantasy genres in Saturday, the Twelfth of October makes it a book widely read by teenagers, who find hope in her message of inner strength and a new perspective on their own society.