The Stolen Child

(Paperback)

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Description

Inspired by the poem by W.B. Yeats about the common folk legend of the fairy changelings, this beguiling and truly original tale moves from contemporary America to nineteenth-century Germany and deep into humankind's most basic fantasies and fears. Seven-year-old Henry Day is kidnapped by fairy changelings living in the dark forest near his home - ageless beings whose secret community is threatened by encroaching modern life. They give Henry a new name, Aniday, and the gift of agelessness - now and forever, he will be seven years old. The group has left another child in Henry's place. This changeling boy, who has morphed himself into Henry's duplicate, must adjust to a new way of life and hide his true identity from the Day family. But he can't hide his extraordinary talent for the piano, and his near-perfect performances prompt his father to suspect that he is an impostor. As he grows older the new Henry Day becomes haunted by vague but persistent memories of life in another time and place. Both Henry and Aniday search obsessively for who they were before they changed places in the world.

Reviews

A welcome addition to the field of contemporary fantasy...sparklingly quirky.. wistfully elegiac...Overall it is a gently redemptive parable about becoming oneself * Scotland on Sunday *
Keith Donohue evokes the otherworldly with humor and the ordinary with wonder. The Stolen Child is unsentimental and vividly imagined. I enjoyed it immensely -- Audrey Niffenegger
A remarkably deep and strange read * Arena *
Remarkably accomplished * Guardian *
Utterly absorbing...Impressive...Beautiful...A luminous and thrilling novel about our humanity * Washington Post *

Author Bio

Keith Donohue is the Director of Communications for the grant-making arm of the National Archives in Washington, D.C. He has written for the New York Times and the Washington Post and is the author of the novel Angels of Destruction.