Shortlisted for the prestigious 2008 Carnegie. A gripping historical adventure that is dramatic, touching and compelling. Servant girl Gatty has an unusually beautiful voice which leads her to being swept up in a Crusade to the Holy Land. Her courage and determination enable her to survive incredible danger and so to find an unexpected reward.
The magnificent picaresque story of a medieval pilgrimage. Of all the characters in The Seeing Stone and At The Crossing-places, it is Gatty the village girl - steadfast, forthright, innocent and wise - who has won the hearts of readers. This is her story. Gatty, who has never been further than her own village, is picked by Lady Gwyneth of Ewloe to join the band of pilgrims accompanying her to Jerusalem. The journey is fraught with danger and uncertainty, but opens Gatty's eyes to new wonders and transforms her. A joyful, heartrending, triumphant novel, packed with incident, teeming with characters, and a long-awaited treat for the many readers who want to know what happened to Gatty after the Arthur trilogy.
'The book captures a world very different from our own' Daily Express
'Writing of this quality is made to last... a classic in the true sense of the word' The Bookseller
Author
About Kevin Crossley-Holland
Kevin Crossley-Holland was born in 1941 in Mursley, North Buckinghamshire, and grew up in Whiteleaf, a village in the Chiltern hills of western England. He attended Oxford University, where after failing his first exams, he developed his passion for Anglo-Saxon literature. After graduating, he was the Gregory Fellow in Poetry at the University of Leeds, and from 1972–1977, he lectured in Anglo-Saxon for the Tufts University of London program. He worked as a children's book editor while beginning to write his own poems and reinterpretations of medieval legends. He has also taught for extended periods in America. He now lives in Norfolk, England.
Kevin Crossley-Holland has published six volumes of adult poetry and several libretti for opera. In the world of children's books, he is best known for his numerous retellings and anthologies, and in particular his version of Beowulf. "Storm," his novella, won the Carnegie Medal in 1985.
