Need help figuring out this book- at least 2 decades old

Cafe Society
1

I haven’t posted in Cafe Society that I am aware of- scanned the rules, and this looks like the place.

The book I am looking for is one I read as a ten-year-old in Vinton, IA- I believe it was in the Young Adult section.

It is about a girl who moves to live with her father when she is 11 or 12, somewhere on the east coast.

There is a boggy/fenlike area instead of beach, where there is about 20 yards of water that is only about six inches deep, but right before this girl moved here, a kid drowned, so the area is mostly avoided, as who could drown in six inches of water.

There is only one habitation near the water, which belongs to a rather odd, possibly witchy woman who befriends the girl.

The girl begins having these odd fugue moments when she is down at the water, where she is living the life of a girl her age in Norse settled early (pre-English-colonist) America (caveat; this may be eastern Canada), and she is in love and betrothed to a viking.

At some point (perhaps what started the fugues) she finds a viking artifact, apparently authentic, and learns more about them from the woman in the house by the sea.

The book ends with her nearly drowning in six inches of water as she attempts to swim out to sea to follow her love in the viking boats, as she knows from this life that the ships will never return as the woman in the house told her of the history of the early viking colony.

I have looked for this on and off for nearly three decades, including visiting the library I checked it out of three times. I cannot for the life of me recall this book.

If anyone can help, I would greatly appreciate it!

2

I don’t recognize the description, but I/others here have sometimes been able to identify a book anyway. I’m not coming up with anything on this yet, though. It doesn’t help that “Viking” is the name of a publisher!

Do you remember any specific names of characters, locations, etc.? Something like that could help narrow down search results. Also, could you say roughly what year you first read the book? You say you were 10 at the time, but I don’t know when you were 10. :slight_smile:

3

Try asking “Stump the Bookseller” over at Loganberry Books.

4

Could it be Anne of Green Gables? There are a number of things that match it - girl (circa age 11) moving in with new family (though in this case it was an adoption rather than moving in with dad), and I don’t recall any mention of Vikings in it, but it takes place on the east coast (Canada in this case), and does involve talk of drowning and the heroine does end up in a sticky water related situation after attempting to reenact a legendary story, though I believe it was a Celtic/Arthurian legend rather than a Viking one. The girl does have serious flights of fantasy, though (but none that I recall were related to Vikings).

5

The OP said “at least 2 decades old”, so they were probably 10 around 1990 or so, meaning that the book was first published in or before 1991.

6

She says “at least 2 decades” in the title but “nearly three decades” in the OP, and it seems like the latter refers to how long she’s been trying to locate this book and not the time she first read it. So we might actually be dealing with a book published no later than the late 1970s, but I really can’t tell from the OP.

7

I don’t see how that could fit: Anne’s foster-adoption by an elderly brother and sister who were expecting her to be a boy whom they could train as a farm hand doesn’t sound at all like a girl moving in with her father. And although Anne is certainly very imaginative, the author doesn’t describe anything like a past-life regression or psychic flashback into a historical setting such as the OP was talking about.

Moreover, Anne of Green Gables was published over 100 years ago, and the OP seemed to imply that it was more or less a contemporary YA novel in the late 20th century.

Interesting idea, though.

8

Wow, I hope someone comes up with the title. It sounds like a really good book.

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I have actually toyed with the idea of rewriting what I can from memory- but I don’t know that I want to read it so much as to attempt to lure a copyright infringment lawsuit in order to do so!

I was about ten in 1984, and as I read just it before we moved to Houston in 1985, I believe it was then that I read it. I believe it was written in the 1970’s, although it could have been a new publication in the 80’s, but it was a paperback (I think…), although I could be wrong about this.

It was in a stack of about 20 books that I borrowed as we lived in very very rural Iowa and my mom made a deal with the librarian to let me take out more than the 6 books that were allowed, due to my not having tv/fast reading/she wanted alone time in the woods…

The only book in the stack I remember was The Martian Chronicles, which I found horribly tedious at that age. Most of the books were from the SF/Fantasy section of the YA section, however, if that helps. I don’t remember any names, unfortunately, and it has been long enough that I likely wouldn’t remember even if the correct name was thrown at me.

Thanks for the help! I will have to try the ‘stump the bookseller’ later…

I have been offered wonderful help by bookstore personnel (The Other Change of Hobbit) who aided me with things like ‘it was the green book that had the horrible picture of the cat on the spine that went out of print in 1982’ and it was the first try…

But those folks drew a blank at this one.

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ETA: I lost a decade- I am getting old, fast!

Missed the edit window, but I meant to say that I did indeed mean at least 3 decades old.

I have been saying 2 decades for 10 years, apparently, when I have discussed this book.

Sorry!

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I don’t have the answer, but it sounds an awful lot like it could fit into the Twilight series of books. Unfortunately, they’re out of print, and also there’s that pesky issue of the other Twilight books which you may have heard of, which is going to make Googling problamatic. I’m having trouble finding good summaries of each book, but here at least is a list of titles as a place to start. I can eliminate Demon Tree, The Avenging Spirit, and Vicious Circle as possibilities as I remember them well from my own childhood.

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Was the girl’s experiences “real” in the story (e.g. due to some fantasy or SF mechanism), or were they psychological? In Anne of Green Gables that I mentioned above, Anne seems to believe in otherworldly disturbances and does go off on wild fantasies, but they are psychological in nature and there is no “real magic” afoot as far as I remember.

Do you remember the names of any of the characters?

Can you quote (roughly) any of the passages in the book?

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This does not sound right- there were not any Horror segments- the girl didn’t like her house or her dad, and looked on these fugues as a better life and wanted to be an adult, as she was in the other life. Far from being scary, it was a welcome interruption in her life.

I might try to locate that, however, just to rule it out. There were not any other young people in the book, so that cover, which shows other children, makes me think it is eliminated on that alone.

I cannot quote anything, and no, as I mentioned earlier, I don’t recall anyone’s name.

The experiences are meant to be rather indeterminate as to whether they are real, and I think that at one point she may have managed to withdraw something from the past…

But she does end up nearly drowning in 6 inches of water, so she doesn’t seem to be physically going anywhere.

So again, unsure as to whether there is any magic happening or not, but it was in the Fantasy section.

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I remember reading this book - If I’m correct, it’s 1975’s “On the Wasteland” by Ruth Arthur. My memory is fuzzy but distinct (if that makes sense), and the main character was an English orphan named Bethany who would become Estrith, a princess of the Viking settlement, whenever she entered the salt marshes. I definitely remember there being warning about people drowning in the marshes, and I remember her becoming very close with Estrith’s family, and there was a big dilemma about whether she stayed in the Viking world or returned to her dreary life as Bethany.

Google searches seem agree with me - while I haven’t found a consistent summary, this description from the Encyclopedia of Fantasy is an almost perfect match. http://books.google.com/books?id=mfjAjibERF0C&pg=PA63&lpg=PA63&dq=%22on+the+wasteland%22+viking&source=bl&ots=cqeifHPGth&sig=kXTd7y6oQh1dSk1ykVx8VFhy3SQ&hl=en&ei=S725TsuNC4KEtgfU_KHYBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CFgQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=%22on%20the%20wasteland%22%20viking&f=false

I hope this is correct. Happy reading!

15

Oh, wow!

That sounds like it, but as I said, I have zero idea what the names were… clicking the link now!

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Well? Well?

:smiley:

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Amazon doesn’t have much of a description of On the Wasteland, but there is a cover image and used copies are available very cheaply: http://www.amazon.com/wasteland-Ruth-M-Arthur/dp/0689304730/

ETA: WorldCat tells me that this book is still available through some public and university libraries (about 200 across the English-speaking world, mostly in the US), but not anywhere in Iowa anymore.

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On Alibris.

Here’s a better description

StG

19

Well, I don’t know.

None of the descriptions are any good, except for the description provided by Cabot Covian- but that is so uncannily accurate that I am pretty sure this is it.

Of course it isn’t available on Kindle, so I can’t just buy it and begin reading, but I will be ordering one of the used copies cheaply- I don’t think I will go for the $158 one, though…

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I am in Berkeley, CA, now- any near me?