The Tale of Gwyn

Informationen zum Autor Cynthia Voigt won the Newbery Medal for Dicey's Song, the Newbery Honor Award for A Solitary Blue, and the National Book Award Honor for Homecoming, all part of the beloved Tillerman Cycle. She is also the author of many other celebrated books for middle grade and teen readers, including Izzy, Willy-Nilly, and Jackaroo. She was awarded the Margaret A. Edwards Award in 1995 for her work in literature, and the Katahdin Award in 2004. She lives in Maine. Klappentext Originally published under the title Jackaroo. New York: Atheneum, 1985.The Tale of Gwyn Chapter 1 GWYN STOOD CROWDED IN AMONG the women. She held the hood of her cloak close around her head, covering her hair, shadowing her face. The basket she kept at her feet. Like the others, she kept her long dark cloak close around her, as if she too were cold. Tad moved restlessly at her side, and she placed a hand on his shoulder, warning him without a word. She wished he had been willing to stay outside and play with the other children. But he stuck close to her. They had been standing so for over an hour now. Gwyn’s eyes smarted. The long, low-ceilinged room was stuffy. While the heat from the fireplace, back behind the polished wooden table, did not penetrate the length of the room, its smoke did. The door beside the fireplace was closed. Closed also was the door behind them, through which they had entered. The little windows up high on the walls were shuttered. The air in the room smelled of wood smoke and wet woollen cloaks drying out, of bodies gone long without washing, of damp hay spread over the dirt floor. Low conversations flowed all around her, swirling like gusts of snow. The air in the room grew warmer, which increased the odors of smoke and bodies. Tad put his face in against her arm, burying his nose. Gwyn employed an old trick: she closed off her nose from inside, as if it were stuffed up with a cold, and breathed through her mouth. With her nose closed off she could not taste the stench. Men didn’t come to the Doling Room. The shame would be too great for a man to carry. So the women carried it, Gwyn thought. It was a hard thing to be a woman, her mother had often told her. Looking around her, Gwyn could agree. Why then should she marry? Because, her mother would say, there was nothing else for her. “Would you live always at the Inn, serving in another woman’s house? Would you go with a widower and raise another woman’s children and your own disinherited? Or live alone, like Old Megg? Or maybe you’ll go to serve a Lord, perhaps, you with your proud tongue.” Her mother, Gwyn knew, gave practical advice. When winter broke, her parents would look about to see who had a good holding, good enough to last out the lean years. They would announce her dowry of four gold coins and wait to choose among those who might come forward. Cam, she knew, would not come forward. In the spring, then, she would have to say yes to some man, or let Da announce her intention never to marry. One or the other, because service in a Lord’s house was unimaginable. One or the other was her choice, and she liked neither; but she could do nothing about the hardness of that. Gwyn kept her eyes on her basket; she didn’t want to catch anyone’s attention. There was no one here to recognize her, the Innkeeper’s daughter from the Ram’s Head, but between the bitter envy of those whom hunger held close and the danger of traveling without a man’s protection, she preferred to be unknown. Women of all ages had gathered in the low room, each bringing her basket to be filled. Some were young and straight, some older and beginning to be bent under the years, a few held infants, a few were swollen with unborn children. All—young or old, fair or plain—had hungry faces: eyes dull, skin stretched pale over hollow cheeks. ...

Product details

• Authors: Cynthia Voigt
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster USA
• Languages: English
• Age Recommendation: ages 12 to 99
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 26.05.2015
• EAN: 9781481421805
• ISBN: 978-1-4814-2180-5
• No. of pages: 432
• Series: Tales of the Kingdom; Tales of the Kingdom
• Subject: Children's and young people's books