YA Historical Fiction–12th and 13th Centuries

I read two YA historical fiction novels set in medieval times this week–very different places, however.

The Queen’s Daughter by Susan Coventry. Joan of England, the youngest child of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, is transplanted from Poitiers to Sicily to the Holy Land back to Poitiers and finally to Toulouse. The fictionalized biography of Joan takes as its theme her struggle to choose between her parents’, especially her mother’s, advice to trust no one, certainly no man, and Joan’s own inclination to love and be loved. I enjoyed the story of this princess caught in the middle of the marital and political skirmishes of her parents and her pugnacious older brothers, and although the novel is mostly imagined since very little verifiable information about Joan’s life exists, it was believable, if perhaps a bit romantic. There’s also some odd speculation about Joan’s (married) love life, but it’s OK for older teens. Anyway, don’t we all want to believe that the princess lives happily ever after with the love of her life, after maybe some suffering and difficulty? That’s what happens in this version of Joan’s story, and it makes a for a satisfying read. Joan lived from 1165-1199 in medieval Europe.

Daughter of Xanadu by Dori Jones Yang. There are probably several novels that take the adventures of Marco Polo as a starting point, but this one is different because it’s told from the vantage point of the fictional sixteen year old granddaughter of the Great Kublai Khan, the Mongol ruler of China in the 13th century. Emmajin scorns the idea of becoming a dutiful wife and wants only to use her skill with a bow and her horsemanship to serve the Great Khan, her grandfather, in battle. However, when she is assigned to prove her loyalty by spying on the Westerners, Marco Polo,his father and his uncle, Emmajin becomes more and more confused about who she is and what she really wants out of life.

Reading this book was like entering another world, like the mind-bending worlds that fantasy and futuristic authors create, only this one was a real historical place and time. I knew very little about Mongol culture and customs when I started the book, and I felt as if by the time I finished I at least had an introduction to the world of Kublai Khan and his court. Emmajin is an admirable and strong character, and her romance-from-afar with Marco Polo is handled deftly and tastefully. Emajin also changes over the course of the book from an immature tomboyish adventurer to a young woman with strength and purpose. There are so many bookish, refined females in historical fiction; it was refreshing to read about an intelligent girl heroine who loves to fight and ride horses and compete for prizes. And she learns to channel that strength and competitiveness into pursuits that will make a real improvement in her world.

Daughter of Xanadu was nominated for 2011 Cybil Awards, Young Adult Fiction category.

More YA historicals set during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries:
The Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters are not Young Adult, but older teens and young people would enjoy them immensely. They are murder mysteries set between about 1135 and about 1145, during the contest for the crown of England between King Stephen and Empress Maud.
Spider’s Voice by Gloria Skurzynski. Heloise and Abelard, the famous French lovers, as seen from the viewpoint of a trusted servant, Spider. 12th century.
De Granville trilogy (Blood Red Horse, Green Jasper, and Blade of Silver) by K.M. Grant. Two young men fight in the armies of Saladin and of Richard the Lion-hearted during and after the Third Crusade. 12th Century.
The Youngest Templar series (Keeper of the Grail, Trail of Fate, Orphan of Destiny) by Michael Spradlin. Cliffhanger warning: be sure to read these together because the first book, at least, ends at a rather inopportune and unsatisfying moment. An orphan boy goes to the Third Crusade, makes friends, discovers his heritage, and returns to England along with his companions, the archer Robard Hode and maid Maryam. (Get it? R.H and Maid M.?)
Knight Crusader by Ronald Welch. Third crusade again. 12th century.
The Single Shard by Linda Sue Park. Newbery Award winning story of a Korean orphan boy who wants to become a potter. Tree-Ear, named for a wild mushroom that grows without seed, lives under a bridge with his friend and mentor, Crane-man, but he has a dream of becoming an artisan. Late 12th century.
Hawksmaid: The Untold Story of Robin Hood and Maid Marian by Kathryn Lasky. Early 13th century during the reign of King John.
Perfect Fire trilogy (Blue Flame, White Heat, and Paradise Red) by K.M. Grant. The Catholic crusade against the Cathars in southern France (Occitania). Raimon and Yolanda fall in love during a time of religious conflict and danger for their country. 13th century.
The Kite Rider by Geraldine McCaughrean. Twelve year old Haoyou must protect his family after the death of his father in 13th century China.
I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade by Diane L. WIlson. Oyuna wants to become a great horsewoman, but when Kublai Khan’s soldiers raid her village and take all the horses, she disguises herself as a boy to remain with the herd.
Sisters of the Sword by Maya Snow. Two sisters, Kimi and Hana, run away from a tragedy in their aristocratic home and take refuge, disguised as boys, in the dojo of Master Goku who runs the finest samurai training school in Japan. Semicolon review here. 13th century.
The Ramsay Scallop by Frances Temple. Elenor and Thomas go on pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James before their arranged marriage can take place. End of the 13th century (1299).

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien, chapter 7: Queer Lodgings

Jun30

In which we are introduced to a rather alarming character named Beorn.

The name Beorn is actually an Old English word for “man” or “warrior” but it originally meant “bear.” Beorn, the next helper that Bilbo and the dwarves find, is a man/bear. Gandalf calls hims a “skin-changer.”

“At any rate he is under no enchantment but his own. He lives in an oak-wood and has a great wooden house; and as a man he keeps cattle and horses which are nearly as marvellous as himself. They work for him and talk to him. He does not eat them; neither does he hunt or eat wild animals. He keeps hives and hives of great fierce bees, and lives most on cream and honey. As a bear he ranges far and wide. I once saw him sitting all alone on the top of the Carrock at night watching the moon sinking towards the Misty Mountains, and I heard him growl in the tongue of bears: ‘The day will come when they will perish and I shall go back!’ That is why I believe he once came from the mountains himself.”

Shapeshifting, according to Wikipedia, is a common theme in folk tales and mythology. Sometimes voluntary (as with Beorn) and at other times inflicted upon an unwilling subject by a sorcerer or god (Beauty and the Beast), shapeshifting from man, or woman, to animal gives the shifter both new abilities and new limitations. With Beorn, the advantages of being a bear are emphasized: he can travel far and rapidly in his bear-shape and defeat powerful enemies like the Wargs and the goblins. Gandalf seems to think that the visit to Beorn’s house is both perilous and necessary. Z-baby says that Beorn is a “creepy” character. She said, “What if he got mad and decided to turn into a bear and eat them?” I guess that’s the danger you run when you’re dealing with a bear-man.

Beorn can and does help the dwarves and Bilbo, but he can also be a bad enemy if he is annoyed or crossed.

“A goblin’s head was nailed to a tree just outside the ate and a warg-skin was nailed to a tree just beyond. Beorn was a fierce enemy. But now he was their friend, and Gandalf thought it wise to tell him their whole story and the reason of their journey, so that they could get the most help he could offer.”

At the end of this chapter, Gandalf goes off to other business, leaving the dwarves and Bilbo to enter the forest of Mirkwood by themselves. As he is leaving, Gandalf mentions, in an off-hand way, the Necromancer, an early incarnation of Sauron, the powerful satanic villain of The Lord of the Rings. The enemy that Bilbo and his companions have to deal with, eventually, in The Hobbit is the dragon Smaug, but first they must face the perils of Mirkwood.

A biographical sketch of Beorn.

YA Dystopian Fiction Trilogies

Jun29

First, some definitions.

dystopia: an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or an environmentally degraded society. The opposite of utopia.

trilogy: a group of three related novels, plays, films, operas, or albums.

Young adult fiction is abounding in dystopian fiction trilogies these days. Why dystopias? Maybe it has something to with the question I ask myself when I’m worried about the success of a huge project I’ve undertaken, “What’s the worst thing that could happen if I fail?” Usually, the answer is comforting. Things could be worse than they are now, and even if the whole project fails, life will go on. Dystopian fiction is like that: you think our society/government/legal system/moral climate is going to hell in a handbasket? Just read about X in this great new book. Things could be much worse, and still there’s hope, usually, in the young adult dystopian novels at least.

Why trilogies? Well, I’m tempted to say that the publishers want to sell three books instead of just one, that the story in these books could often be edited down to one chunky novel. However, that’s not always the case. There’s something about the three-book series that lends itself to the introduction, climax, ending resolution arc of a grand story. The one thing I know about this trend is that it frustrates readers who often get involved in the first volume of a projected trilogy or series only to find out that the next book hasn’t even been written yet and won’t be published until next year.

Oh, well. If you’re a fan of these dystopian fiction trilogies, here’s an annotated list of the ones I’ve read or heard about and can recommend:

The Giver, Gathering Blue, and Messenger by Lois Lowry. The Giver won a Newbery Medal. My review is here. The three books set in this futuristic seeming utopia are related, but not a proper trilogy that continues from one book to the next.

The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. The first one is great, quite absorbing (Semicolon review of The Hunger Games here). The second book in the trilogy is an OK follow-up, and the third book is riveting and quite violent. Here’s my review of Mockingjay with notes on spiritual lessons I found while reading.

The Declaration, The Resistance, and The Legacy by Gemma Malley. If the chance to live forever came with a price, would you opt in or out? Semicolon review of The Declaration.

Uglies, Pretties, and Specials by Scott Westerfield. “Uglies is set in a world in which everyone has an operation when they turn sixteen, making them supermodel beautiful. Big eyes, full lips, no one fat or skinny.” I haven’t read this series, but I’ve heard good things about it.

The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials, and The Death Cure by James Dashner. My rant about The Maze Runner and unfinished series books that leave me twisting in the wind. I haven’t read the second and third books in this trilogy.

The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1), The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2), and Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking, #3) by Patrick Ness. In Prentisstown everyone can hear the thoughts of all the men in town, a situation that makes for a lot of Noise and not much privacy. These books should be read together, if at all. They’re all one story, and they should have a violence warning attached.

Unfinished series:
The Roar by Emma Clayton. Semicolon review here. I’m not sure this one is meant to be a trilogy, but it does have a sequel called The Whisper, to be published sometime later this year, 2011? Wait for the sequel because this story of mutant twins living in a totalitarian state behind The Wall is absorbing and thought-provoking, but unfinished. The ending is not an ending at all, but rather a set-up for the second half (or third).

Delirium by Lauren Oliver. Lena lives in a managed society where everyone gets an operation when they turn eighteen that cures them of “delirium,” the passion and pain of falling in love. Sequels will be Pandemonium (2012) and Requiem (2013).

Matched by Ally Condie. There’s not so much action and adventure in this book, but more romance and thoughtful commentary on the pros and cons of a “safe” society bought with the price of complete obedience to an authoritarian government. Second book, Crossed, will be out November 1, 2011.

Divergent by Veronica Roth. This one is satisfying as a stand-alone, but the second book in the series, Resurgent, will be out next year, 2012.

Missionary Fiction

Jun23

In an episode of what Madame Mental Multivitamin calls synchronicity/serendipity/synthesis, I read two works of fiction this week based on the lives of the authors’ missionary grandparents. I’ve also been thinking a lot about sending two “missionaries” from my own home to Slovakia in a couple of weeks and about my mother and my father-in-law and the legacy of faith they have given to me and to my family.

The first book, The Moon in the Mango Tree by Pamela Binnings Ewen, was just O.K. The writing quality is somewhat uneven, and the characters sometimes enigmatic. The story opens in 1916 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, when Barbara (Babs), a schoolgirl and aspiring opera singer, meets Harvey Perkins, a young medical student. As the two grow together, get married, and then endure being parted while Harvey serves in the military in France during The Great War, Barbara learns that she must subordinate her choices to those of her loving but firm-minded husband. The couple go to Thailand to serve as medical missionaries, even though Barbara must give up her hopes for a career in opera and even her enjoyment of classical music itself to live in a remote mission outpost in Northern Thailand. Of course, with such different outlooks and goals in life and with what I suppose was a typical (?) early twentieth century lack of communication in the marriage, trouble is bound to ensue. And it does.

Besides the fact that the characters’ motivations were sometimes obscure, I guess what I disliked about the story was that neither Harvey nor Barbara seemed to have much of a faith in God to lose. They do lose their faith, both of them, in the face of suffering and hardship in Thailand. But I couldn’t figure out whether they believed in anything much in the first place, other than themselves and their own ability to “be a team” and improve the physical lives of the Thai villagers. The book was good, but not great, although I liked the ending and the ideas about the legacy we leave as a result of the choices we make.

The second book I read had the same basic premise as the first: a young couple goes to the mission field, China this time, in the early twentieth century. However, City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell made me cry. It’s very, very difficult to write a book about Good People, about heroes and heroines, without making them larger than life, unapproachable, and unrelatable. (The dictionary says “unrelatable” isn’t a word, but it should be, and I’m going to use it anyway.) Will and Katherine Kiehn are ordinary, fallible people, and yet they are heroes. They go to China as young, untested volunteers with only their calling and their faith in God’s love and mercy to sustain them, and they survive disease and poverty and famine and family tragedy and war and persecution. Each of the two has a “crisis of faith”, maybe even more than one, but they manage to hold onto the the God who is always holding on to them, even when doubt and fear threaten to overwhelm. The story is told in first person from Will’s point of view, interspersed with excerpts from Katherine’s sporadically kept journal. The whole novel is just golden.

As a reviewer, I feel as if I ought to be able to tell you how Ms. Caldwell was able to write such a true story about people that I believe in as much as I believe in my own parents and grandparents, but I can’t. The humility and the honesty displayed in the characters of both Katherine and Will inspire imitation. I wanted to sit beside an elderly Will Kiehn, listen to his stories of China, and absorb some of his wisdom and his indomitable meekness.

City of Tranquil Light is one of the best fictional accounts of missionary life I’ve ever read. It ranks right up there with Elisabeth Elliot’s No Graven Image, a book I mentioned (and recommended) here. City of Tranquil Light has the added advantage of painting a wonderful picture of a committed, growing marriage.

Can you tell I really, really liked this book? I happened to pick it up from the library and read it because it’s one of the books on the long list of nominations for the 2011 INSPY Awards. Thanks to whomever nominated this book. If all the nominated books are as good as this one, the judges will have an impossible job.

1901: Music and Art

Jun22

Music:
Richard Strauss: Feuersnot
Anton Dvorak: Rusalka
Scott Joplin: The Easy Winners Joplin had already had a hit in 1899 with the publication of the sheet music to his tune The Maple Leaf Rag. Over the next few years ragtime would become the most popular musical genre in the United States. Karate Kid, by the way, has been practicing The Maple Leaf Rag for a while, but he still doesn’t have it quite up to speed.

Art:
Nineteen year old Spanish artist Pablo Picasso presents his first exhibition in Paris in June, 1901.

Child with a Dove by Pablo Picasso, c.1901.

1901: Books and Literature

Jun21

Nobel Prize for Literature: Sully Prudhomme (Who?) French poet and essayist.

Fiction Bestsellers
1. Winston Churchill, The Crisis (not the British politician Winston Churchill)
2. Maurice Thompson, Alice of Old Vincennes
3. Bertha Runkle, The Helmet of Navarre
4. Gilbert Parker, The Right of Way
5. Irving Bacheller, Eben Holden
6. Elinor Glyn, The Visits of Elizabeth
7. Harold MacGrath, The Puppet Crown
8. Maurice Hewlett, Richard Yea-and-Nay
9. George Barr McCutcheon, Graustark
10. Irving Bacheller, D’ri and I

Critically Acclaimed and Historically Significant:
Frank Norris, The Octopus: A Story of California A fictional attack on the monopolistic stranglehold of American railroad tycoons over the business and life of the entire country.
E. A. Ross, Social Control. Ross was an American sociologist, eugenicist, political progressive, and supporter of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.
Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery
George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman I read a lot of Shaw, including this play, back when I was in college, but I guess that I would find the humor and the ideas a lot more pernicious and at the same time superficial nowadays. I prefer Shaw’s arch nemesis and friendly combatant, Chesterton, these days.
George A. Gordon, New Epoch for Faith
Rudyard Kipling, Kim I tried to read this picaresque story of a British/Irish orphan boy who travels across India with a Tibetan mentor or guru, and eventually becomes involved in espionage as a small part of The Great Game. I just couldn’t make myself finish.
Anton Chekov, Uncle Vanya and The Three Sisters

Nonfiction set in 1901:
American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, The Birth of the “It” Girl, and the Crime of the Century by Paula Ururburu. Recommended by Alyce at At Home With Books.

Fiction set in 1901:
Jocelyn, Marthe. Mable Riley: A Reliable Record of Humdrum, Peril, and Romance. (MG Fiction)
Turner, Nancy. These is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901. (MG Fiction)
Death of Riley by Rhys Bowen. Recommended by Whimpulsive.

1901: Events and Inventions

Jun20

January 10, 1901. Spindletop, the biggest oil well to date in the world, erupts, spewing a tower of oil nearly 200 feet into the air. The well will go on to produce 75,000 barrels of oil a day.

January 22, 1901. Queen Victoria of England dies at the age of 82. She was Queen of England and the British Empire from 1837 to the time of her death, for approximately sixty-four years. Her son Edward VIII becomes King of England.

January-July, 1901. Filipinos rebel against the U.S. occupation and annexation of the Philippine Islands, but on July 4th, William Howard Taft is installed as Civil Governor of the islands. General Arthur MacArthur, Military Governor since May 1900, sets sail for Japan.

Abraham Kuyper, b. 1837. Dutch pastor and theologian, he also becomes prime minister of the Netherlands in 1901: â€œOh, no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: â€˜Mine!â€™â€

September 7, 1901. The Peking Treaty ends the Boxer Rebellion and gives huge commercial advantages to European and American interests.

September 14, 1901. William McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, dies eight days after being shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. His death was probably the direct result of a botched operation to remove the bullet(s) rather than being caused by the shooting itself. Vice-President Teddy Roosevelt becomes president.

December 10, 1901. The first Nobel prizes are awarded. Wilhelm Roentgen of Germany wins the Physics Prize for his discovery of X-rays.

December 12, 1901. Guglielmo Marconi sends the first ever telegraphic message across the Atlantic Ocean from the coast of England to Newfoundland, Canada.

Ping Pong fever swept Europe and the United States as families converted their tables into indoor tennis courts. The game, known as wiff-waff or Gossima at first, only caught on at about the same time that the name was changed by the manufacturer to Ping Pong. The first Ping Pong tournament was held in December, 1901.

PB&J: “The first located reference to the now immortal peanut butter and jelly sandwich was published by Julia Davis Chandler in 1901. This sandwich became a hit with America’s youth, who loved the double-sweet combination, and it has remained a favorite ever since…During the early 1900s peanut butter was considered a delicacy and as such it was served at upscale affairs and in New York’s finest tearooms.”

What’s New in Books about Peculiar Children?

Jun19

A young teen boy finds that rather than being like his mundane and commonplace family, he is really one of the magical people, many of whom live in a sort of home for special children where they are free to practice their special magical talents. The world is divided between the commoners and the magically gifted, and the magical people are further divided into two groups: the good ones and the evil ones who, in an attempt to gain power, are about to destroy the world as we know it. Could it be Harry Potter?

Find out in my review on the new Youth Reads page at the The Point (Chuck Colson’s Breakpoint).

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien, chapter 6: Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire

Jun15

Bilbo had escaped the goblins, but he did not know where he was. He had lost hood, cloak, food, pony, his buttons and his friends.

Into the fire, indeed. Bilbo and the dwarves bounce from one fix to the next, each a little more perilous than the one before. In this chapter, they have escaped the goblins only to be treed by Wargs. My annotated version of The Hobbit has a few notes on the origins of various names of creatures that Tolkien introduces in the course of his tale:

Hobbit— Tolkien said, “I don’t know where the word came from. You can’t catch your mind out. It might have been associated with SInclair Lewis’s Babbitt. Certainly not rabbit, as some people think.
But he also wrote elsewhere, “I must admit that its faint suggestion of rabbit appealed to me. Not that hobbits at all resemble rabbits, unless it be in burrowing.”

Goblins— Tolkien’s goblins resemble the goblins of author George Macdonald in The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie, except that Macdonald’s goblins had soft and easily injured feet, which Tolkien said he “never believed in.”

Warg—Tolkien in a letter to author Gene Wolfe, 11/7/66, “It is an old word for wolf, which also had the sense of an outlaw or hunted criminal. This is its usual sense in surviving texts. I adopted the word, which had a good sound for the meaning, as a name for this particular brand of demonic wolf in the story.”

Orcs— are barely mentioned in The Hobbit, but rather the term “goblin” is used for all the creatures that live in the mountains and serve evil. By the time Tolkien wrote LOTR, he had switched to calling all of Sauron’s creatures orcs. In Tolkien’s Middle Earth, goblins and orcs are approximately the same or related creatures.

As the chapter closes, the eagles rescue Bilbo and Gandalf and the dwarves from their predicament in the trees. And Bilbo gets the dubious pleasure of spending the night in an eagle’s eyrie.

“So ended the adventures of the Misty Mountains. Soon Bilbo’s stomach was feeling full and comfortable again, and he felt he could sleep contentedly, though really he would have liked a loaf and butter rather than bits of meat toasted on sticks. He slept curled up on the hard rock more soundly than ever he had done on his featherbed in his own little hole at home. But all night he dreamed of his own house and wandered in his sleep into all his different rooms looking for something that he could not find nor remember what it looked like.”

Chapter 1, An Unexpected Party
Chapter 2, Roast Mutton.
Chapter 3, A Short Rest.
Chapter 4, Over Hill and Under Hill.
Chapter 5, Riddles in the Dark.

The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic by Jennifer Trafton

Jun15

Cybils nominee: Middle Grade Fantasy and Science Fiction. Nominated by Amy at Hope Is the Word, because she beat me to it.

Read the first chapter of The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic.

The rest of it is just as good as the first chapter. End of review.

O.K. I do have more to say about this book. But I think mostly what I want to say is:

1. Read this book.

2. If G.K. Chesterton were living now and writing fantasy for middle grade readers, he would be accused of being Jennifer Trafton. Or she would be him. Or something.

3. Since my lovely Z-baby likes maps, here’s a link to a map of The Island at the Center of Everything.

4. How did she or her publisher manage to get Brett Helquist to illustrate? Mr. Helquist is the guy who did the illustrations for Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events and for Blue Balliet’s Chasing Vermeer and its sequels. Perfectly wonderful pictures.

5. Persimmony Smudge wants to be a heroine. How is this ambition different from what I wrote about yesterday, wanting to be famous? Is it different? I think so, but I’m not sure how to articulate the difference.

“The truth was that King Lucas the Loftier had never gone down from the mountain in his entire life It meant no longer being On Top of Majestic, no longer being Lofty. It meant descending into the world of Everybody Else. He would have no idea what to do, where to go, how to behave. He wouldn’t know who he was anymore.”

6. Persimmony Smudge is a wonderful name for a character. So are the following names in the book: Guafnoggle the Rumblebump, Worvil the Worrier, Jim-Jo Pumpernickel, King Lucas the Loftier, Rheuben Rhinkle, Barnbas Quill, and Dustin Dexterhoof. (I’ve always liked the word “pumpernickel”, but I never thought of using it as a name.)

7. Insanitorious. Ludiculous. Ridiposterous. Flibbertigibbeted. Discumbersomebubblated. The presence of these words and others like them in this book compels the logophile to read and enjoy. Word play galoric.

8. You can buy a copy of the book at the Rabbit Room Store online, if you want. Or Amazon.

“You said might!” Worvil covered his face with his hands. “Of all the words that have ever been invented, that is the worst. All of the terror in the world hangs on the word might. The Leafeaters might kidnap me and keep me locked up underground forever. They might tie me to a tree and leave me to be eaten by poison-tongued jumping tortoises. A hurricane might flood the Willow Woods and both of us drown . . .”
Persimmony stared at Worvil and discovered that she liked him. He was a coward, certainly, but he had Imagination. She liked people with Imagination.

9. Have you read the first chapter yet?

10. Oh, just buy the book already. (No, you cynical people, I don’t know Ms. Trafton personally, and I don’t get a commission from recommending her book. I do get a few cents if you go straight from here to Amazon and buy the book there.)

“For the last time, I am not the one who puts gifts in the pots!”
“Well, if you don’t, who does?”
“I have no idea,” said the potter. “Who puts words of truth into the strings of a Lyre? Perhaps there some things that we are not meant to understand. Without a few mysteries and a few giants, life would be a very small thing, after all.”