When Night Eats the Moon

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is also the
author of The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek, and
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Hom

Thirteen-year-old Holly, who plays the flute and the recorder, is
fascinated by Stonehenge. A summer holiday with British relatives
enables her to visit the ancient site, where she is horrified by its
modern setting of chain link barriers and tourist shops. Holly’s need
to be alone leads her to Aunt Sally’s age-old barn where she is drawn
into its dark, earthen room cut into a hill.

Smoothly, the mood switches from realism to fantasy or, rather, a
smoothly crafted blend of the two as a bewildered and disbelieving Holly
finds herself in prehistoric England at a time when Iron Age people were
settling in the region of Stonehenge. Holly is as strange to these
people as they are to her. Confusion deepens when the ancients decide
she is a warrior come to save them from the invading Celts. Holly, who
sometimes wonders if she is dreaming, is drawn into a web of complex and
dangerous events.

When Night Eats the Moon is a beautifully told tale of mystery, danger,
and conquests. Holly’s ongoing astonishment as she exists in two
time-frames establishes both her credibility and the reader’s willing
suspension of disbelief. The working-out of difficult family
relationships on both sides of the Atlantic deepens the mood of
reconciliation and joy. Unfortunately, the book tells us nothing about
the author, whose prose styles neatly straddle poetic fantasy and
mundane matters. Highly recommended.