Review
From the book jacket: On a summer night, Henry Day runs away from home
and hides in a hollow tree. There he is taken by the changelings—an unaging
tribe of wild children who live in darkness and in secret. They spirit him away,
name him Aniday, and make him one of their own. Stuck forever as a child, Aniday
grows in spirit, struggling to remember the life and family he left behind. He
also seeks to understand and fit in this shadow land, as modern life encroaches
upon both myth and nature.
In his place, the changelings leave a double, a boy who steals Henry’s life in
the world. This new Henry Day must adjust to a modern culture while hiding his
true identity from the Day family. But he can’t hide his extraordinary talent
for the piano (a skill the true Henry never displayed), and his dazzling
performances prompt his father to suspect...
Beyond the Book
The Stolen Child is Keith Donohue's first novel. He lives in Maryland, near
Washington, D.C. and was, for many years, a speechwriter at the National
Endowment for the Arts.
The Stolen Child is inspired by the poem of the same name by W.B. Yeats ( bio).
Yeats first published
The Stolen Child in
The Wanderings of Oisin and
Other Poems (1889), the volume of poetry that established his
reputation. This is the first verse:
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters...
