Wolfchild

by Rosanne Hawke

Raw is a runaway serf who must stay hidden for a year and a day in order to become free. Inspired by the lost land of Lyonnesse, Wolfchild is a historical fantasy, a story of affirmation and self-discovery.

Genres: Fantasy

176 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2003

About the author

When little I ran around with a jotter and a pencil, pretending to write a story but not knowing how to spell any words except Dick, Dora and cat. My mother asked me to tell stories. A lot of my stories stayed in my head, as being the youngest and living in the country didn't bring many opportunities for an audience. I was born in Penola, in South Australia. We had a sheep farm until I was six, then we moved to a property in Central Queensland. I went to school at a one-teacher school in Banana, a little country town named after a bullock.

My first short story was published in the Moura State School magazine in 1967 when I was in grade 8. At 14 years, I moved back to South Australia and attended Gawler High School where I won an Arts Scholarship to complete Years 11 & 12. I started a romantic novel when I was 17 but I burnt it later.

It wasn't until I was working in the Middle East and Pakistan, teaching ESL, bringing up kids, when I started to write seriously. My kids loved the story game we played and one night after telling a story, my daughter asked me to write it down.

I have a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide and teach Creative Writing at Tabor Adelaide, South Australia, a Christian accredited tertiary institution. I have researched Cornish identity in Australian children's literature and enjoy writing about culture, faith, relationships, displacement and belonging, music and cats.

Reviews

[Morton · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging tale of the beginning of a forbidden friendship that just might grow to be something more. This is a lovely book that delivers the feeling of rural life in Lyonesse in the shadow of the turn of the first millennium. Steeped in historical language and mythology, there is a distinct feeling of authenticity and understanding of the culture, customs and beliefs of the time.

[Debbie Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love a well written historical novel and this lovely book by Rosanne Hawke fits the bill perfectly.

[Anne Hamilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Raw is the lone survivor of a shipwreck. Morwenna is a girl on the threshold of womanhood. She sings to wolves and tires to befriend the stranger living in the fogou near the Seven Stones where King Arthur is said to be buried. She’s not afraid of anything — except perhaps Branek, the cruel village boy she suspects her family wants her to marry.

Stranger Law is in force in Lethowsow. Until Raw proves himself in some way helpful to the village, he is a ‘stranger’, to be killed on sight. Morwenna contrives to bring about a meeting between Raw and Lew of Trevalyn, the local lord. But Raw backs away from such an encounter and reveals to Morwenna that he is an escaped serf. Until he’s been free for a year and a day, any of the lords of the land will feel duty bound to return him to his master.

It doesn’t make sense to Morwenna. She knows Lew is not like that. He’s a lord of Cornwall, not one of the Norman overlords from across the sea. And she’s puzzled by Raw. How can a serf own a silver ball?

Set in the year 1098, on a part of the coast of Cornwall now lost to the sea, Wolfchild brings to life the intimacy of life in a medieval home, the freedom and wildness of the forest and the high places, and the hardship experienced by everyone in an only dimly-remembered time of climate change.

An evocative blend of well-researched history and one of the most famous of all tsunami stories —the legendary destruction of Lyonnesse — Wolfchild is sprinkled with words of the Kernewek language and with variations of old Arthurian tales as well as references to distinctive features of the Cornish landscape.

Short-listed for an Aurealis Award, Wolfchild has a faint far-off glimpse of fantasy to it when, towards the end, it draws heavily on the legend of the sunken lands.

[Catherine]

Its difficult to get into wolfchild, but its a good read for when you don't have much time to read a long chapter.