Jacob Have I Loved was published by Thomas Y. Crowell in 1980 and won the Newbery Medal in 1981, making Paterson one of only six authors to win the award twice. The title comes from Romans 9:13 — “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” — God’s apparently arbitrary preference for one twin over another.
Louise (Sara Louise, called “Wheeze”) and Caroline Bradshaw are twins growing up on Rass Island in the Chesapeake Bay during World War II. Caroline is everything Louise is not: beautiful, musical, charming, the center of attention. Caroline’s gift (a remarkable singing voice) draws all the island’s resources toward her — money for lessons, adults’ admiration, the community’s investment. Louise is the leftover twin — capable, strong, but invisible, defined by what she is not rather than what she is.
Paterson’s achievement is making Louise’s resentment comprehensible without endorsing it — and then showing the slow, painful process by which Louise escapes the prison of comparison. The novel does not give her a compensating gift that matches Caroline’s; instead, it gives her something harder and more valuable: the understanding that her life is not a competition she has lost but a story she has not yet written.
The Chesapeake Bay setting is rendered with the authority of deep knowledge — the watermen’s culture, the seasonal rhythms of crabbing and oystering, the island’s isolation and claustrophobia.
Collecting Jacob Have I Loved
First edition (Thomas Y. Crowell, New York, 1980): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $40–$120
- Signed first edition: $80–$200
- Without jacket: $10–$25