Rhiannon

by Vicki Grove Narrated by Jennifer Van Dyck

Overview

Fourteen-year-old Rhiannon lives high on the bluff of Clodaghcombe with her healer Mom and grandmother. She helps them tend to the sick and wounded from the town below-a town swirling with controversy ever since the arrival of the Norman gentry and the tragic shipwreck that killed the king's only son and heir to the throne. Rhiannon finds herself transfixed imagining the horrid disaster that took so many youths near her own age. Then tragedy strikes closer to home with the discovery of a stranger's body near their bluff and accusations of murder leveled at one of their residents. Rhiannon knows she has to do something even though it means standing up to the aristocracy. But with help from a young monk and a mysterious pirate from France Rhiannon hatches a dangerous plan to discover the true murderer's identity and sets off on a course that could have stunning consequences and perhaps even reveal an astounding secret that could change history.

Editorial Reviews

School Library Journal

Gr 6-9
This historical novel with some elements of fantasy meanders through a multithreaded plot, but it has strong character development. Rhiannon, her mother, and grandmother live atop a steep bluff in 12th-century Wales. They have become nurses to the hopeless cases of the village below. The invalids include, at various times, a girl who was injured by a blow to the head, a man who sleeps without waking, and a man who lost his leg in a cart accident. The story revolves around the murder of a young man near the river bank; it examines how the characters react and are affected by it. Joining them is a young oblate who takes an interest in the healing women and the accused murderer, who is one of their charges. Eventually the truth wins out, and justice is served within the context of the times. Pacing is a little slow, but the writing is lovely, and the story will appeal to students who enjoy medieval settings or historical fiction. Some elements of magic may broaden its audience, but this book is most likely to appeal to historical fiction readers.
—Robin HenryCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Portions of this uneven medieval adventure are excellent, full of graceful language and description and deeply evocative of its Wessex setting across the bay from Wales. The main character, the almost-15-year-old Rhia, her healer mother Aigneis and her grandmother, who keeps to much of the older pagan ways, live on Clodaghcombe Bluff in a circle of tiny cottages. Aigneis is a healer who takes in those the village below can no longer care for: a mother and her twin babes dying of burns, a beautiful child numbstruck by a blow from an evil brother, a shipwrecked man who never speaks. A murder is committed in the forest, and its solution lies in these characters and more. Vivid descriptions of faerie, eerie and saintly vie with jarring language not appropriate for the 12th century-"mesmerize," "by the book," "this can't be good." Grove makes interesting use of the treatment of lepers, albinos and the disabled in telling her tale, which culminates in a Beltane Eve night that unmasks the murderer and reveals much else besides. (Historical fiction. 12-15)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169239461
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	03/27/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	10 - 13 Years

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