This is a moving story with likeable and vividly drawn characters, simple but important values, and an insightful portrayal of the world seen through the eyes of a child with dyslexia.
Fern dreams of riding on a wild horse's back, as fleet as the wind. She makes pets of small animals and watches the bison herds as they pound over the endless grasses of the steppe. Chafing at the inequality of being female, she longs for the freedom her twin brother enjoys to run free in the wilderness. One day in early spring, Fern secretly rescues a young horse mired in the bog, names her Thunder, and tames her enough to ride. But the people of her tribe are distrustful of her bond with nature. Is she a witch? Fern's future looks bleak until a silent man in a rival tribe, known only as The Nameless One, teaches her about patience—and love. Susan Williams's lyrical prose makes this journey to prehistoric western Asia at once inspiring and heart wrenching.
" Well, when it was discovered that the trolls had switched you babies (you in your floating water lily cradle, with the other babe in a nest of down), my friend the kingfisher was to give you each a gift. You see, we never knew that you had been changed in your cradle until it came time for your wings to grow and you to be starting to flutter and the other to be learning to dive. By then we loved you, and the water sprites loved her, and it was beyond changing things back. But your mother wept because you couldn't fly, and the water sprite mother wept because her babe couldn't breathe underwater, so the kingfisher tried to make it right.... "
Retired logger Jean du Bois rescues an orphaned moose calf. Raised in the barnyard, young Muskeg forms a special bond with Kate, the gentle draft horse. When Kate becomes too old and tired to pull the wagon and plow, Jean du Bois fears he will have to give up his beloved farm and move to town—until his grandson and Muskeg show him a clever solution to his problem.