Synopsis
Something strange is out in the woods. Something Hannah has never seen before. Good or evil, she can’t tell. But she knows she must go out and meet it.
Hannah lives in the lonely frontier backwoods. Her mother has abandoned her for reasons she can only guess. And her father spends all his time hunting for some mythical treasure she knows he’ll never find. So for food and shelter and the warmth of a fire, Hannah must do all the work.
Then her father sells her to be a house servant and she is sent away. For a whole year she’s condemned to work like a slave for the brutal, cruel Barrow brothers.
There, in the dead of night, she sees a strange white figure. And she begins a curious friendship and starts her adventure of escape, discovery, and reclaiming what is rightfully hers.
Publishers Weekly
With a setting as grippingly oppressive as Watts's debut novel, Stonecutter, this 19th-century tale draws a convincing, rather grim portrait of an outcast living a "far piece from town" with her treasure-hunting father. Narrator Hannah Renner has always been shunned because of her "queerly mismatched" eyes ("Folks looked away when I opened my eyes, for the left one is as pale as nearly frozen milk, and the right one is a deep sea green"). Shortly after reaching adolescence, her father, deeply in debt, "sells" her to the uncouth Barrow brothers, who treat her like a slave. Hannah's only escape from drudgery comes at night, when she secretly meets a ghostly pale boy who calls himself Brother Boy. Tension mounts when Hannah learns that one of her "owners" plans to make her his bride. In desperation, she flees to the wilderness with Brother Boy. At the conclusion, several characters' motives seem at odds with their prior behavior, but the author successfully builds suspense while poetically evoking an aura of mystery around Hannah and Brother Boy. Ultimately the violence, lack of compassion and abandonment Hannah has experienced throughout her life makes a stronger impact than the joy she feels when freedom is within her reach. Ages 11-up. (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.