Winner of the 2014 Monica Hughes Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy, from the author of Plain Kate.
At the very edge of the world live the Shadowed People. And with them live the dead.There, in the village of Westmost, Otter is born to power. She is the proud daughter of Willow, the greatest binder of the dead in generations. It will be Otter's job someday to tie the knots of the ward, the only thing that keeps the living safe.Kestrel is training to be a ranger, one of the brave women who venture into the forest to gather whatever the Shadowed People can't live without and to fight off whatever dark threat might slip through the ward's defenses.And Cricket wants to be a storyteller -- already he shows the knack, the ear -- and already he knows dangerous secrets. But something is very wrong at the edge of the world. Willow's power seems to be turning inside out. The ward is in danger of falling. And lurking in the shadows, hungry, is a White Hand, the most dangerous of the dead, whose very touch means madness, and worse.Suspenseful, eerie, and beautifully imagined. Praise for Sorrow's KnotWinner of the 2014 Monica Hughes Award for Science Fiction and FantasyA Kirkus Best Book of the Year"A winner. A lovely gem, dark and quiet as the dead but glimmering with life as well. Not to be missed." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review"Bow displays the patient, rhythmic pace of a seasoned storyteller, and the spare elegance of her prose manages to inspire both chills and tears as the tale requires.... Dark but ultimately hopeful, this quiet fantasy will leave its mark on readers and have them contemplating shadows in a whole new way." -- Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, starred review"Bow's background in science is evident in her Northern American setting; everything from the botany to the zoology feels authentic. Her prose is painterly. . . Readers will enjoy watching her discover that 'the world was larger than we knew.'" -- Publishers Weekly"Readers of suspense will love the dark tension of the story line, an ebb and flow that carries through to the very end." -- School Library Journal
ERIN BOW was born in the Midwest and studied particle physics in college, eventually working at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. She then decided to leave science in order to concentrate on her love of writing. Her debut novel, Plain Kate, won the TD Canadian Children's Literature Award. Erin also received the Governor General's Award for Young People's Literature – Text for Stand on the Sky. She lives in Kitchener, Ontario, with her husband James and their two children. Erin Bow can be visited online at www.erinbow.com. Something was resting in the nest of shadows under the cornstalk, something stirring as Cricket's hand came near. Something gawk-stretched and ugly as a new-hatched bird with no feathers and skin over its eyes. Something that moved subtly, like the earth moving above something buried. Something struggling and starving. Cricket reached backward, fumbling toward the shadow-cage, and the dark thing open its dark mouth like a baby bird, like a snake. It opened so wide that if it had had a jaw, its jaw would have broken. Suddenly it was all mouth, and it was reaching –There was one heartbeat in which Otter couldn't move. She was still hiccupping, though her heart had nearly stopped with horror. Kestrel shouted: "Cricket!" Cricket grinned up at Kestrel, groping unknowing toward the shadow – and Otter dove to save him. Anyone in the pinch would have counted her as a child. But it never occurred to her that most people would have dived the other way."Ware!" shouted Kestrel. Cricket's smile froze, his head whipped toward the warning. He was halfway to his feet by the time Otter hit him. She'd meant to knock him sideways, but because he was twisting she hit him wrong. He fell full backward, into the corn. Onto the dead thing. Praise for Sorrow's KnotWinner of the 2014 M
