The Ghost's Child

by Sonya Hartnett

Summary: Maddy is an only child with a snotty, image-obsessed mother and a seemingly distant father. When her father takes her on a trip around the world, she starts to see a different side of him, though, and begins to love and understand her father in a different way. The trip opens her mind, and opens her father's heart to Maddy. He asks her to decide what she thinks is the most beautiful thing on earth, and she has a difficult time nailing it down to just one thing, finally choosing the sea gull. Upon their return, her father seems to go back to the cold man he had been before, and her parents begin pushing her to marry, and marry well. But one day Maddy meets a young man on the beach, and he is wild and free. She calls him Feather, because that is what he reminds her of. She chooses to be with Feather, and he tells her he loves her, but Feather is a wild thing, and Maddy cannot hold him. Maddy undertakes a mystical journey to try to find Feather again, and ask him an important question, one that she may already know the answer to.

My thoughts: I have a hard time understanding how this is a young adult novel, not because of any controversial elements, but because I don't think the story is very relatable to teens. Not many (thank goodness) will have gone through what Maddy experiences. I do, however, think it's a stunningly beautiful novel that doesn't pull any punches describing grief and loss. In the way of stories like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, this is a sort of strange tale, but one that could be of great comfort to someone going through a hard time.