Out of the Shadows

Singleton, Sarah

ISBN 10: 0618927220 / ISBN 13: 9780618927227

Published by Clarion Books, 2008

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Out of the Shadows
• Publisher: Clarion Books
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0618927220
• ISBN 13: 9780618927227
• Binding: hardcover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Deep in the woods, a child with green-tinged skin and long matted hair awakens. She is Isabella Leland, daughter of a healer who was executed as a heretic some 300 years earlier. On her mother's death, Isabella was taken in by the crow people---faierie folk---who can manipulate space and time. The first time she returned to the real world, Catholics ruled England. Now, those who follow the pope are regarded with suspicion and shunned. When Isabella emerges from her hiding place, she's discovered by another outcast, Elizabeth Dyer, whose family follows the old ways. Elizabeth wants to befriend Isabella, but she has her own troubles. Her brother has brought home a priest in need of shelter. Hiding him is an act of treason, and his pursuers are closing in. Sarah Singleton has a gift for blending the seen and the unseen, the matter-of-fact and the magical, into a convincing whole. Here she offers a fast-paced plot---a cat-and-mouse game between hunter and hunted---while exploring questions about religious faith and fanaticism that will resonate with YA readers.

Reviews

In Elizabethan England, young teen Elizabeth Dyer lives in trepidation, her family a political target because of their Roman Catholicism. In the course of just a few days, she makes a new friend—a strange, green girl named Isabella—and finds herself to be the protector of a Catholic priest hiding from a menacing tracker adored by Elizabeth’s employer. Isabella, who hails from the thirteenth century, has an association with the world of faerie that the Protestants won’t accept—though the Catholics do with peculiar nonchalance—and helps the sixteenth-century Elizabeth’s efforts to keep her family, the priest, and herself safe. The myriad issues of politics, religion, and time travel (never well explained) present a confusing stew that may be too much for readers not well versed in the systematic differences between Catholicism and the Church of England, or tales of British faeries, but the writing is smooth and character evocation compelling. A tidy ending leaves Isabella’s ultimate fate 300 years after her mortal era unplumbed. Grades 8-10. --Francisca Goldsmith