Knockabeg: A Famine Tale

by Mary E. Lyons

The mortals of Knockabeg have suffered through potato famines before, but never one caused by a Destruction Curse. Now the selfish faeries hold the fate of the village in their wee hands. Only they can defeat the silver-winged enemies who laid the curse. Armed with sky-nets and darts, the Trooping Ones gallop through the clouds to do battle. All except Sticky.
The eccentric, unpredictable Sticky has other plans. A member of the Queen’s High Council and faery guardian to an eleven-year-old boy, she stays behind to weave her dreams of luxury and revenge. Yet the truth is, none of us, even faeries, knows what the morrow will bring. We think it is ours to command, then it turns and sticks out its tongue. And isn’t that just the way of it?
Against a wild Celtic background of sea and sky, Mary E. Lyons tells a captivating story of magic, high adventure, and the tricky ways of love.

128 pages, Hardcover

First published August 27, 2001

About the author

Mary E. Lyons, a former teacher and librarian, became a full-time writer in 1993. She is the author of nineteen books for young readers published by Scribner, Atheneum, Henry Holt, Houghton Mifflin and Oxford University Press.

Born and raised in the American South, Mary Lyons lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with her husband, Paul. Her publications for adults include The Blue Ridge Tunnel: A Remarkable Engineering Feat in Antebellum Virginia (History Press, 2014), The Virginia Blue Ridge Railroad (History Press, 2015), and Slave Labor on Virginia’s Blue Ridge Railroad (History Press, 2020).