Stripes of the Sidestep Wolf
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- 8,49 €
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- 8,49 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
Ever since Dad went off the deep end and decided he didn't need to work anymore – insisting the Lord would provide – Satchel O'Rye has felt stuck for life in his dying country town. A high school dropout drifting from one small carpentry job to the next, Satchel can see nothing beyond his own dreary duty to help keep the family afloat. But things start to change when he spies a strange doglike animal at a nearby mountain – and mentions the fact to Chelsea Piper, an awkward young woman considered the local pariah. Could the animal he saw be a Tasmanian tiger, a marsupial thought to be extinct? And if they found it again, could it give them both a new chance at life? A mesmerizing tale of a young man fighting his future, a young woman fighting her past and a mysterious creature who teaches them something about survival by an international award-winning author and the recipient of the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Prize.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Living in a bypassed Australian town with people "sunk by the dislocation" wrought by a new highway, hardworking 23-year-old Satchel O'Rye is coping as well as he can with his overshadowing mother, Laura, a nurse, and his fanatically religious father, William. Years earlier William suddenly stopped running the local gas station and began creating religious miniature watercolors, becoming increasingly odd and threatening. Laura's longsuffering nature simply serves to " the bars around tighter." Even his long-time friend, Leroy, finds work out of town, leaving Satchel with Leroy's outcast sister, Chelsea, and his own beloved dog, Moke, as his only companions. In a rather forced subplot, Satchel spies a strange animal in the mountains, and Chelsea speculates that it is a presumed extinct Tasmanian tiger. The day Satchel accidentally hits Moke with his car and then fights back against his father's rages, he again spots the animal and becomes determined to begin his own journey. Published in Australia in 1999, Hartnett's novel is challenging and may be ultimately less rewarding for readers than the ones that followed (Thursday's Child; What the Birds See). Yet the book is characterized by the same graceful prose, unusual protagonist (though somewhat older than is typical for young adult audiences) and keen sense of place that carry the story to its hopeful conclusion. Ages 12-up.
