Polly and the One and Only World

by Don Bredes

Set in a much-diminished America called the Christian Protectorates, a poor country ravaged by coastal flooding, drought, and catastrophic social upheaval, the novel features 15-year-old Polly Lightfoot, a maiden witch of deep heritage and tender ability in the craft. When her identity is exposed, Polly is forced to flee New Florida, where she has taken refuge from a military purge of the country's infidels, pagans, and followers of false creeds. With the help of her steadfast familiar, a raven named Balthazar, and her brave teenage companion, Leon, Polly undertakes a harrowing journey from the troubled south to the wild north to rejoin her people in Vermont and save her ancient craft from obliteration.

Polly and the One and Only World presents a frighteningly vivid depiction of our stricken land in the stifling grip of fundamentalists and suffering the grim consequences of climate calamity. Yet the story's dire vision will inspire readers of every age to appreciate their own freedom and their capacity, today, to work for positive social and political change.

Genres: Dystopia, Young Adult, Fantasy

336 pages, Paperback

First published October 6, 2014

About the author

I am a freelance writer of novels, essays, and screenplays and a teacher of writing and contemporary literature. I live in the hills of northern Vermont.

I earned an MFA in Fiction from the University of California at Irvine and an AB in English Composition from Syracuse University. I have been a Wallace Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University, and I've been awarded grants for my fiction by the Vermont Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

My first novel, HARD FEELINGS (Atheneum, 1977), was an American Library Association Best Book in 1977 and a 20th Century-Fox film release in 1982. My published work includes four other novels, MULDOON (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982), and my Hector Bellevance mystery/suspense trilogy, COLD COMFORT (Harmony Books, 2001), THE FIFTH SEASON (Three Rivers Press, 2005), and THE ERRAND BOY (Three Rivers Press, 2009).



My new novel, an edgy young adult fantasy called POLLY AND THE ONE AND ONLY WORLD, will be released in October by Green Writers Press. 

Those who may be interested in my writing may visit my Web site, my Don Bredes page on Facebook, or my Author's Page at Amazon.

I've published short stories, essays, and book reviews in a variety of publications, including "The New York Times Sunday Magazine," "The Los Angeles Times Book Review," and "Paris Review."

Two of my screenplay adaptations have been independently produced and released internationally as feature-length films, "Where the Rivers Flow North," starring Rip Torn and Michael J. Fox, and "A Stranger in the Kingdom," with an ensemble cast including Ernie Hudson and Martin Sheen. They're available on DVD.

When I'm not writing or teaching, I like to cook, garden (mostly vegetables), read, play tennis, hike, birdwatch, fly kites, look at the stars and galaxies, fish for trout, ride my mountain bike, snowshoe, and cross-country ski, as the seasons permit.

Reviews

[Tim Weed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don Bredes is a practitioner of his own peculiar magick, creating for his readers a wholly original world that combines elements of the present, the near future, the distant past, and the purely fantastical – a potent combination. Bredes’ compelling storyworld, at once familiar and exotic, captures our imagination and thrusts us forward into an America that is post-catastrophe, if not quite post-apocalypse. Readers of Polly and the One and Only World are in for quite a ride as they journey northward along the highways and byways of an eerily defamiliarized eastern seaboard, with a plucky young witch and her appealingly prickly winged familiar as traveling companions. Action-packed and thought provoking, this book will change our conception of our own world, and, incidentally, what is possible in the young adult novel.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

First off, I am not a fan of dystopian literature. But I AM a fan of young adult literature, so I read this with a very open mind. Overall, I found the story and characters interesting and compelling. I'd like to know more about Polly's life in Florida before this story takes place, and I'd love a sequel, too. I'll be recommending this to a friend of mine who knows far more about magick and spells than I do.

[Isabel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ll start with the pros. This book was very well-written, and any issues I had with the writing itself was personal preference. Technically (except for typos), the book was very well done.

I also liked the way Christianity was written. I think all of the elements - ignoring their futuristic or apocalyptic details - have been used or endorsed in the past by the Christian church. Putting them all together paints a stark and terrifying picture.

Now for the cons.

There were a lot of typos, as I mentioned earlier. Enough to get irritating. Also, the author was a big fan of meaningless lists. They would go on for five to ten lines and the contents of the lists would not matter AT ALL in the story overall.

The book was meant to be a commentary on our world and how it could spiral out of control, but I took a couple issues with this. First, the natural disasters that ravaged the world are barely mentioned, let alone explained and explored. I assume they were caused by humans, since the book is urging young people to save their society, but we never know. It feels like the situation in the book is partly reliant on that apocalyptic natural event, so it detracts from the realistic feel. Also, the main conflict is between witches and Christians. While more people are practicing witchcraft and Wicca and that sort of thing, they are certainly not a majority. The fact that witches were actual creatures with supernatural abilities made this book completely unrealistic, obviously, effectively destroying the attempt at a social commentary.

Also, I take issue with the fact that the witches had powers but the Christians didn’t. Now, to be fair, the witches didn’t claim to get their powers from their god and Christians don’t claim to have powers at all, but the setup made it feel like witches and their religion was very much real, while Christianity was completely fake. I can’t say for sure how this would go in real life, but I feel like if witches had been around for the entirety of humankind and had possessed powers for that long, more people would believe in the witch’s religion than Christianity. Nobody in the book is surprised that witches have powers, so it is common knowledge, and the idea that witches are evil seems to be a relatively new one. Where did it come from?

The witch system itself is flawed. Are they completely genetic or not? I think Polly said they “can be,” but that implies that witches can access magic without being born into it. So then how are people made into witches? Is there a spell that has to be cast? Are blood witches held in a higher regard than other witches, sort of like the pure blood system from Harry Potter? I was left with more questions than answers when it came to the witches of this world.

And finally, my biggest grievance: what was the point of this story? I’m not talking about the overall message or the metaphorical meaning or anything like that - I already touched on that earlier. No, I mean the actual point of the story itself. During the book, many character-building moments happen: Polly loses her familiar, she loses her spell book, she arrives too late to find her father...but then it’s sort of all undone at the end, when her boyfriend gets a familiar, she regains her spell book, and she finds a candle that will lead her to her father. And then the book ends before they follow the candle! Nothing in the world is changed or influenced by them except for people holding a stronger belief that witches are savages because of how she shot a governor in front of a crowd of families. Everyone who was bad remains bad (or dead), everyone who was good remains good, and the main characters basically get a reset button in the last chapter. What, then, was the point of the entire story? I feel like I wasted over 300 pages worth of reading, and that’s not a good feeling to have while walking away from a book.

EDIT: I can’t believe I forgot this. The scavs, a group of cannibalistic rapists, are all Hispanic. Which is so insanely not okay.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I first read the summary of the book I was captivated by the fact that a main religion was going to be placed as the evil motivation. Although Christianity in historical truth has done some damage to the world's people there are just as much Christians who have been good so it threw me for a loop when there was almost no one Christian in the book that even tried to help out the protagonists, which was a bit disappointing to me.

The main factors that I enjoyed in the book was the teaching of both witchcraft if you would as well as the fabric or Braid that connects everyone within the world whether Christian or non-Christian. The story allowed you to take a chance in being submersed in beliefs that many people don't normally hear about.

The other factor that I liked about the story was the setting - a post-apocalyptic world where the world had to build itself back up by its shoelaces via controlling powers. I know that the book was big to begin with since of all the details and plot but I wish there had been just a bit more explanation how the world came to the powers that it had, especially since it seemed New York had been atomically bombed.

Otherwise the human characters were a bit on the flat side. Although starting off with some personality it seemed the tone of the book seemed to take over them and after a while they were mediocre. The characters that did seem to stay strong throughout the book were the familiars, which I enjoyed reading about, especially towards the end.

Otherwise this book was definitely an interesting read and chance to view the world from another viewpoint. I would be interested in a sequel if one were to come out just to see how the resistance ends, how the characters come back together and to definitely see if Razz continues to be as strong a character as B was.

**Received this book as part of the Members Giveaway at Librarything.com for free in exchange for a reviews**

[Julia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Deeply disappointing. Poor character and world-building. Head whipping changes in plot without adequate transitions. I can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone. I hate writing reviews that sound this mean, but this book has earned it. I only wish I could remember where I saw the good review of this book that caused me to purchase it for my library. I'd like to hold them accountable for the waste of tax-payer money.

[Frances · Rating 4 out of 5]

Danielle and Laila- please read and recommend to your respective library's patrons! Great YA (or anyone) fantasy tale. Quick and engrossing. Sure, written by our awesome friend Don, who is the only person on this planet to occasionally correct my father's grammar. Sequel any time soon?