Calico Captive by Elizabeth George Speare

When mysterious Madame Chang arrives at the inn, her storytelling transports Rendi.

He wonders about the innkeeper’s son who’s disappeared and about peculiar old Mr. The innkeeper’s bossy daughter irritates Rendi. Bad-tempered and insolent, Rendi hates Clear Sky, but he has no way of leaving the sad village where every night the sky moans and the moon has vanished. When a troubled runaway arrives in an isolated Chinese village where the moon has disappeared, he initiates a quest to find the missing orb and resolve his past.Įscaping from home in a merchant’s cart, Rendi’s abandoned in the Village of Clear Sky, where the innkeeper hires him as chore boy. Kit's vindication, her gradual integration into the community and the positive effect she has on those about her, combine here in a well documented novel to rival the author's first work, Calico Captive, which received wide acclaim as a work of 'superior historical fiction'. For the townspeople are mistrustful of this strange girl who already has startled them with her 'magic' ability to stay afloat in water. Her spontaneous friendship with Hannah, an old woman whose Quaker affiliations have branded her as a witch, and her secret teaching of a young child who suddenly is stricken with a strange malady, seriously threaten her safety.

But despite her tastes for finery, Kit is possessed with courage and conviction. Kit, a staunch royalist, accustomed to the easy life of a slave-manned plantation, and her fanatic Puritan uncle are instinctive antagonists. When young Kit Tyler comes from her Barbados home to colonial Connecticut, she is unprepared for the austerity of her uncle's home.

Calico Captive by Elizabeth George Speare