Song of the Forest

Lyrical, intense, and foreboding, this is a remarkable first novel. Set in the Dark Ages, it tells of a year in the life of a remote village, the labors of its inhabitants, their struggles and fleeting pleasures in the face of threatening forces that surround them. The forest dominates their lives—in it lurk the fierce riders who come to rob, kill, and rape, and from it they evoke a being, half-man, half-clay, for their defense.