The Woman Who Loved Reindeer
   Meredith Ann Pierce
  2000 Magic Carpet Books - Harcourt Brace
   ISBN: 0152017992


In a winter's tale of danger & devotion, Caribou - wisewoman & seer - must lead her people to the other side of the world to safety. She seeks the help of her unearthly companion who alone knows the ways of the great Reindeer herds.

Meredith Ann Pierce describes the vision that inspired this dramatic & redemptive saga:
“I was in high school...the last day of school. I stood looking out over the grassy, deserted playing field when all at once an image formed itself in my mind: a woman stands in a barren place. Her arms reach out, the fingers widespread. The wind is blowing into her open mouth and between the fingers of her hands. She is wearing white doeskin. Away from her a magnificent reindeer is sprinting, the woman's child cradled in his horns. The rack of horns is rocking gently with the reindeer's bounds, and the child is screaming - not with fear or anger, but with delight.”

In her thirteenth year, Caribou lives alone & dreams in rich symbols & colors. She can read things in flurries of falling snow, hear words on the wind. The people of the villages fear her yet they seek her out for help.

Everything changes when her brother's wife brings her a baby whose coloring differs from everyone. Resenting the loss of her brother's company to marriage she resists, at first, the responsibility of this changeling babe. Soon, however, Caribou begins to care for the infant with golden eyes & they become inseparable

Meredith Ann Pierce has woven a wondrous tale of earthly beauties & shape-shifting marvels. She has written of the Reindeer's Path where thunderous wild herds sweep, like a river of living silver - all heads, antlers & backs, the tendons of their limbs snapping in a huge brittle sound.

Over the years, the babe grows into boyhood & the people of the village come to her more often to settle their disputes & heal their ailments. Then one spring after a terrible winter, all the elders come to her with their tales of confusion & dread. They''ve come to their wisewoman to learn what can be done.

It is the saga of how The Woman Who Loved Reindeer leads her people through a landscape of danger & destruction to reach the other side of the World & the promise of new life that leaves you breathless with wonder, the sounds of vast herds of reindeer racing across winter ice bridges, past erupting lands, echoing in your ears.

One of the best! I am SO glad it has been reprinted & in celebration I have rewritten my review & made contact with Meredith Ann Pierce in hopes of an Interview.

More by Meredith Ann Pierce: The Darkangel Trilogy
(06/18/00)

Rebecca