Eidi by Bodil Bredsdorff

This second book in The Children of Crow Cove series begins years after the first.  This book focuses on Eidi, the daughter of Foula who has just had a baby, Eidi’s half-brother.  The house feels to crowded with the baby and Eidi decides it is time that she heads off to help the shepherd Rossan by spinning his wool into yarn.  When she reaches his home, Rossan is about to head off to town to sell his wool, so she accompanies him.  Eidi acclimates to the town, which is the largest community she has ever seen.  While she is there, she gets work with a man to knit shawls and discovers a beaten and underfed boy.  She befriends the boy but is soon in a situation where she has to take drastic action to save him.

Bredsdorff’s language is so simple that it is poetry.  Her writing matches the simple lives of the people, their hard work, and the Danish landscape where there is beauty and harshness.  Reading this second book was like returning to a place you never knew you had been missing.  The book is without pretense as the story is told matter-of-factly but with such attention to detail that it is like living it.  Here is one lovely example from Page 15:

Eidi got out of her settle bed and put on her clothes.  When she stepped outside, she could see everything plainly in the dawn twilight, but it was all gray.  The houses were light gray, the roofs dark gray, the sky overcast, without a star.  It as a world where color didn’t exist.  She sat down on the stone steps and waited, without knowing what she was waiting for.

The passage continues as the sun rises and color returns to the landscape.  This is writing that speaks volumes without being verbose.  Haunting, beautiful and skillfully done.

Characters in the book are complex.  Bredsdorff is not afraid of having villains be human, heroes make bad choices, or having people who are both hero and villain at once.  Though simple, her book has layers of meaning.  Lessons are learned with no preaching, children are not cosseted but are seen as capable, strong and vital. 

Highly recommended, this book is a great sequel to the first.  Read both of them to have the full experience of Crow Cove.  Appropriate for ages 10-12.

Reviewed from library copy.