Synopsis
Growing up on the edge of the Missouri wilderness in the 1830s, Nadya knew she was not like other girls. But when she became a woman and the Change came, she discovered just how different she was. For Nadya was a shapechanger, a werewolf like her mother and father before her.
For a time, Nadya and her family kept their secret, living undisturbed by the edge of the forest - until a handsome, red-haired man taught Nadya about passion, and brought her unexpected tragedy. Fleeing her past, Nadya set out along on an arduous trek west, encountering danger, love, and thrilling adventure as she sought a place where she could live wild and free.
From her parents' first meeting in an untamed frontier town to her daring rescue of a beautiful young survivor of a lost band of pioneers and her fateful meeting with an Indian shaman who recognized her power, Nadya's story is the captivating and richly realized saga of a most remarkable woman.
Reviews
A female werewolf roams the Old West in this deeply absorbing dark fantasy from Murphy (The City, Not Long After), whose The Falling Woman won the 1987 Nebula Award for Best Novel. While the story kicks off in rural Poland, it soon moves to the American frontier and the descendants of the Old World's hardy, furry peasants?foremost among them, Nadya Rybak, who tries to accommodate both her human and her lupine natures. The heart of the novel consists of Nadya's trek in the mid-1800s from Missouri to California. Having come through great personal tragedy brought about by a trusting nature and her own burgeoning sexuality, Nadya befriends the more cultured Elizabeth and the prepubescent Jenny. Together, the three young women fight their way across the swollen rivers, parched deserts and frosty mountains of the vast American frontier. En route, they encounter rattlesnakes, Indians, the remains of the cannibalistic Donner party and Elizabeth's repressed sexual urges, which lead to an affair between her and Nadya. While Murphy's description of the trek sometimes reads more like a historical travelogue than a fantasy, it features welcome bursts of supernatural flourishes. Especially fine are the passages dealing with the Cheyenne, in which the author highlights the strengths of Nadya's werewolf heritage by contrasting it with the Indians' spirituality. With its strong heroines and passionate storyline filled with romance, adventure and dangers both physical and moral, this novel will appeal to a wide array of readers, not just those who shiver with delight when the moon is full and the wolf's bane blooms.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Rousing historical fantasy from the author of the Nebula- winning The Falling Woman (1986), etc. In the 1830s, Dmitri and Marietta Rybak and their daughter Nadya carve out a farmstead in the wilds of Missouri. Dmitri teaches Nadya to shoot and ride man- style, but the family's chief oddity is that they're werewolves. Adolescent Nadya finds herself strongly attracted to a hunky neighbor, Rufus Jones, but one night Rufus and the other settlers, stirred up by whiskey and a mad preacher, insist on going to hunt wolves--the very night when Nadya and her parents undergo their transformation. Crack shot Rufus kills both Nadya's parents, while Nadya barely escapes. In the morning, once again in human shape, Nadya takes her gun, shoots Rufus dead, hacks off her hair, dresses like a man, and heads west. She helps Elizabeth Metcalf, abandoned by her companions while her father lay dying of fever, and young orphan Jenny make the terrible crossing of prairie, desert, and mountains into California. But here Nadya and Elizabeth, now lovers, must part: Elizabeth can't leave civilization again, while Nadya can't bear to remain. Finally, weakly, Nadya wanders north into Oregon, where she meets a half-Indian member of the wolf fraternity who can accept her for what she is. Overextended but intense and gripping, with lots of authentic background detail. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Murphy turns with great success to historical fantasy, giving us Nadya, the werewolf child of European werewolf immigrants. She grows up in 1830s Missouri and heads west after her parents' tragic deaths. She endures all the normal hardships of the trail to California at that time, to say nothing of the special hazards incumbent on being a werewolf. She seeks a frontier where no one will trouble her but finds it steadily receding before her. Based on thorough research, featuring convincing characterizations, and sparked by a page-turning pace (despite the fact it is so richly detailed that you want to slow down now and then), this is a comprehensively excellent yarn. Roland Green
The award-winning author first published a portion of Nadya in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine as "An American Childhood." In the 1830s Missouri frontier, Nadya comes of age as a shape-shifting werewolf. When her suitor kills her werewolf parents, she heads west to seek a new life. This historical fantasy, sympathetic to wolves, is highly recommended.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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