Healer

by Peter Dickinson

Pinkie Proudfoot, a tiny child of only ten years, is considered a treasure to all those who have witnessed her remarkable healing powers. To help Pinkie make use of her extraordinary gift, the Foundation of Harmony is established. Its followers are loyal and committed to the cause. Sick people travel from far away just to see her; she is their ray of hope.

Not all stand in awe of the Foundation, however. Sixteen-year-old Barry Evans suspects that the Foundation many consist of greedy crooks. Could they simply be exploiting Pinkie’s talents? When Barry discovers what the Foundation is really doing to Pinkie, he becomes determined to get her out. But will he be able to help her escape safely—and to where will she escape?

“Dickinson’s imaginative, stylish writing excites admiration, as it always does, and so do his characterizations.”— Publishers Weekly

“The level of suspense and sense of occult power will draw readers right in and keep them reading.”— Booklist

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Childrens, Fiction

188 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Peter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson OBE FRSL was a prolific English author and poet, best known for children's books and detective stories.

Peter Dickinson lived in Hampshire with his second wife, author Robin McKinley. He wrote more than fifty novels for adults and young readers. He won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children's Award twice, and his novel The Blue Hawk won The Guardian Award in 1975.

Reviews

[Ericka Clou · Rating 3 out of 5]

My 6th-grade reading journal:

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some things I just never did figure out, like giving this girl a weird name and describing her homeliness several times. There's a lot of things to think about here, besides just the occultish, science-fictionish adventure. I really did enjoy it, though it's odd and I'm not sure how wide its appeal is.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this one up because I love Peter Dickenson, and for beautiful prose this book did not disappoint. I had to rate it low just because the pace was so slow, I wanted to spend more time with the characters but their story was over! Frustrating.

[William Leight · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much like “The Gift”, “Healer” is a thriller centering around a child with unusual powers: there’s also a family resemblance to “Annerton Pit”. Unlike those two novels, however, the protagonist of “Healer” is not the child, here 10-year-old Pinkie, the title character: instead, it’s the teenage Barry, who’s been her friend ever since the moment, some years ago, that she first used her ability to heal one of his migraines. But Barry also becomes her friend simply because she needs one: she doesn’t have friends her own age, her emotionally distant mother isn’t interested in her, and her wheelchair-bound grandfather, to whom she is close, lives too far away for them to spend much time together. All this is learned through flashbacks from the present day, in which Pinkie is the centerpiece of an alternative healing center/cult run by her stepfather, who, it is strongly implied, married her mother in order to make it possible for him to exploit Pinkie’s talents. Barry visits her there in order to learn if she’s happy, and if not, to try to get her out. And it mostly works, as anyone who has read enough Dickinson would expect. He does an excellent job with the setup — all the characters feel like real people, even Pinkie’s stepfather, despite his somewhat stereotypical ‘70s cult leader air — and effortlessly maintains suspense throughout Barry’s time at the center and the subsequent tautly plotted escape sequence. The only thing that didn’t quite work is his decision to give Barry Bear, a personification — ursification? — of his rage that mostly sleeps at the bottom of his consciousness but occasionally wakes up and wreaks havoc. Or maybe it’s supposed to be an actual bear spirit? It’s a little hard to tell, which is part of the problem, and anyway it’s hard to say that Bear really adds much to the book, or to the character of Barry. But though this doesn’t quite work, it also doesn’t detract much from your enjoyment of the book, which moves briskly and largely maintains an atmosphere of tension that occasionally rises to outright menace. “Healer” doesn’t quite have the depth of Dickinson’s best children’s books — “Tulku”, say, or “Eva”, or “The Devil’s Children” — but it’s very enjoyable nonetheless.

[Mrs W Woodruff · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was an OK read. I needed to read a book about a “healer” for a challenge saw this title so decided to read it.

It were areas in the book that left you with questions that never really got answered.

Barry was a teenager who ended up befriending Pinkie who was a little girl with special healing powers. He looked out for her after an incident on the bus to school. Years later ended up looking out for her well being again thinking she could be in danger.