The Stolen Child (Hardcover )

The Stolen Child Book Description

THE STOLEN CHILD is the story of Henry Day, a seven-year-old kidnapped by a strange group living in the dark forest near his home. He is stolen by changelings--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. In keeping with tradition, 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 completely new way of life and hide his true identity from the Day family. But he can't hide his extraordinary talent for the piano (a skill the real Henry never displayed), and his near-perfect performances prompt his father to suspect that the son he has raised is an imposter. As he grows older the new Henry Day becomes haunted by vague but persistent memories of life in another time and place, of a German piano teacher and his prodigy. Both Henry and Aniday search obsessively for who they were before they changed places in the world.
Narrated in the alternating voices of Henry Day and his double, THE STOLEN CHILD is a classic tale of the search for identity and leaving childhood. With just the right mix of fantasy and realism, Keith Donohue creates a literary fable of remarkable depth and strange delights. The result is a bedtime story for adults, which will appeal to readers charmed and captivated by such recent bestsellers as "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and" The Confessions of Max Tivoli and by the classics of Tolkien and J. M. Barrie.
Inspired by the W.B. Yeats poem that tempts a child from home to the waters and the wild, "The Stolen Child" is a modern fairy tale narrated by the child Henry Day and his double.
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"On a summer night, Henry Day runs away from home and hides in a hollow tree. There he is taken by the changelings--an unaging tribe of wild children who live in darkness and in secret. They spirit him away, name him Aniday, and make him one of their own. Stuck forever as a child, Aniday grows in spirit, struggling to remember the life and family he left behind. He also seeks to understand and fit in this shadow land, as modern life encroaches upon both myth and nature.
In his place, the changelings leave a double, a boy who steals Henry's life in the world. This new Henry Day must adjust to a modern culture while hiding his true identity from the Day family. But he can't hide his extraordinary talent for the piano (a skill the true Henry never displayed), and his dazzling performances prompt his father to suspect that the son he has raised is an imposter. As he ages the new Henry Day becomes haunted by vague but persistent memories of life in another time and place, of a German piano teacher and his prodigy. Of a time when he, too, had been a stolen child. Both Henry and Aniday obsessively search for who they once were before they changed places in the world.
"The Stolen Child" is a classic tale of leaving childhood and the search for identity. With just the right mix of fantasy and realism, Keith Donohue has created a bedtime story for adults and a literary fable of remarkable depth and strange delights.

About the Author :

Keith Donohue has contributed to The Stolen Child as an author. Keith Donohue is the Director of Communications for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the grant-making arm of the National Archives in Washington, DC. Until 1998 he worked at the National Endowment for the Arts and wrote hundreds of speeches for chairmen John Frohnmayer and Jane Alexander. He has written articles for "The New York Times," "The Washington Post," "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution" and other newspapers. Donohue holds a Ph.D. in English from The Catholic University of America. His dissertation on Irish writer Flann O'Brien was published as "The Irish Ana

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