Everyone has something unique and special about them, whether they realize it or not. Our experiences, our past, they influence our mannerisms whether or not we admit it.
"The Scent Keeper" was beautiful and sad, I cried and had my heart broken by this book so many times.
Emmeline was raised in a fairytale. She was taught survival skills rather than social skills. She was raised on the stories her father read her from a book of fairytales. The stories he told her about mermaids. Emmeline's father made a grave mistake that eventually caused his death. I am a very strong proponent of explaining things to your kids. At our last appointment our son's pediatrician told my husband we shouldn't "try and reason with him". I strongly disagree, how is he going to learn to make his own choices if I don't explain why I tell him to do or not to do things? Emmeline's father never explained to her why she shouldn't go to the cove...so of course when she was angry with him and curious, she went. She therefore lead a bear back to their cabin and started the events that lead to her father's death. Maybe if he'd explained why she shouldn't go to the cove she would have actually stayed away. Kids need reasons, not blind commands to follow.
Anyway back to my point. Emmeline was raised on scents. Her father was a scientist, his experiments were all about preserving scents. I found this fascinating. Scents do evoke memories, so wanting to capture and preserve them like a snapshot is an interesting ideal. I'm actually kind of surprised that someone irl hasn't proposed and created such a machine. Emmeline was raised to be able to assess situations, find things etc based on scents.
I personally think this makes her a genius, but kids are cruel so of course they made fun of her. While Fisher's situation made me sad I thought the comparison Bauermeister presented with Fisher's ability to know what was going on just by looking at someone, guessing their drink etc was interesting.
Both of these characters have decidedly unique abilities. It's not some superhuman power, it's not even something that you couldn't find in a person irl. However we don't always notice or realize how much events that we either embrace or try to block affect us. Fisher was hypervigilant. Not because he just randomly had this gift...Fisher was raised around a man who you never knew what you were getting, you never knew if abuse was going to start. Fisher's sense of discernment therefore heightened. He could take one look at a person and have and idea of what was going on in their mind. A defense mechanism.
Similarly, though Emmeline was raised in a loving home her sense of smell and ability to read situations based on them was because of her father, literally training her to be able to pick out smells. she could pick out smells instantly and started learning what smells meant.
In the end I wanted to know more. I wanted an explanation from her mother. Why had Victoria stopped looking for her, why had her father taken her and run away? How could Victoria blame everything on him when it was her own fault? I loved the final ending of the story though, I loved how it ended with Emmeline telling her son everything that had happened and promising to not keep things from him. Children don't learn how to discern and make choices by magic. They need guidance by being given information not commands.
"The Scent Keeper" b y Erica Bauermeister
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