The Light-Bearer's Daughter (Chronicles of Faerie, Book 3) - Softcover

Born in Ireland, O.R. Melling grew up in Toronto with her seven sisters and two brothers. At eighteen, she hitchhiked across Canada and down through California, seeking adventure. A year later, she was off to Malaysia and Borneo on a youth exchange program. That set her motto for life, “to travel hopefully.” She has a BA in philosophy and Celtic studies, and an MA medieval Irish history. To date, her books have been translated into German, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Czech, and Slovenian. She lives in a small town by the Irish Sea with her teenage daughter, Findabhair, and her cat, Emma. Visit her Web site at www.ormelling.com.

While exploring a forest near her Irish hometown, 12-year-old Dana hears a voice that leads her to a mysterious, ethereal woman. Dana learns that she has been chosen to carry an ominous message to the fairy High King. Her compensation for the dangerous mission? She will be reunited with her mother, who disappeared when Dana was a toddler. A shape-shifting, dark presence creeps through the fairy realm as Dana, helped and hindered by magical folk, races to accomplish her quest by the looming deadline. Meanwhile, in contemporary Ireland, eco-warriors stage a fierce protest to preserve the forest from developers. The overlap between worlds is a potent, complex theme that extends even to Dana herself: "Half kid, half teen. Betwixt and between." The political messages are urgent and overt in this third title in the Chronicles of Faerie series. The richly integrated, vivid fantasy scenes balance and support the strident calls for environmental protection and world peace, and the characters' deep, private passages through "layers of storied memory" will bring the issues home for readers. Engberg, Gillian
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved