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Synopsis
Deep in California gold country, three-year-old Sarah McKensie is orphaned by a stagecoach robber and adopted and nursed by a she-wolf in this playful homage to the American tall tale.
In the heart of the California gold country, three-year-old Sarah McKensie is orphaned by a stagecoach robber and adopted and nursed by a she-wolf in this playful homage to the American tall tale.
As she matures, Sarah learns to assist her pack by contributing human tools to the hunt and, eventually, interacting with human travelers. With her best friend and pack-sister Beka at her side, Sarah becomes a local legend: the Wild Angel of the Sierras, rescuer of imperiled travelers. Her altruism is motivated by curiosity and bafflement by the settlers" inability to perceive the world around them, as well as a passion for biscuits. A kaleidoscopic cast colors her adventures, including a brief cameo by Samuel Clemens and, of course, two hiss-worthy villains: one human, one lupine.
Publishers Weekly
Murphy's previous novel, There and Back Again, paid homage to Frank L. Baum's Oz books. Her latest volume continues the tradition, this time looking back to Edgar Rice Burroughs's legendary Tarzan series (plus a good dash of Mark Twain). Rachel and William McKenzie are hopeful settlers in the gold fields of 1850 California, but their dreams are cut short when they're murdered in their camp not far from the boomtown of Selby. Avoiding death by hiding in a cave, their three-year-old daughter, Sarah, finds that her survival afterward depends upon the wolf pack that adopts her. Sarah avoids humanity for many years, until a chance encounter and subsequent friendship with a young Indian woman shows her that not all people are to be feared. When she saves a family in winter-shrouded Donner Pass, Sarah earns the name "The Wild Angel," but keeps to the land until she meets journalist and adventurer Max Phillips, who has been haunted by her since the day he discovered her parents' bodies but couldn't find their little girl. Sarah's friendship with Max grows over the seasons in secret, for Max suspects that the man who killed her parents is still nearby. When the secret slips out, Sarah must face her enemy and extract justice as the wolf pack has taught her. In an afterword, Murphy cites Burroughs's "shameless use of coincidence" to "arrange the characters to his liking," which is clearly the case here. This novel, lightweight compared to Murphy's earlier work, functions best as an engaging summer read. (Aug.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.