Reviews: (by author)

Levin, Betty. Thorn. Asheville : Front Street Books, 2005. $16.95

This is the darkly atmospheric tale of a young boy forced by circumstance into the role of social outcast. Thorn is a cripple, his leg withered by a wasting disease. His twin sister was given to the sea by the people of his home island who view twins as omens of misfortune. Rather than submit his son to the same fate, Thorn's father sets out across the sea to leave his son in exile with his parents' natal tribe, The People of the Singing Seals. Cast ashore, Thorn finds little chance of friendship or even survival. The island society was almost destroyed by a giant wave in the not too distant past, and the survivors are plagued by both the loss of accumulated knowledge and a falling birthrate coupled with an increase in deformed births. The suspicious islanders can't decide whether Thorn should be handled as a threat or seen as an omen of better things to come. Only the Great Mother and a young girl named Willow seem to remember that Thorn is also a person in his own right.

Betty Levin has written a richly textured story that marries an ethnographer's attention to cultural details with splendid characterization and plotting. It is by no means a happy saga, but provides some achingly accurate insights into human motives and behavior in the face of misfortune.

Mark Janssen, March 2006

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