String in the Harp

String in the Harp

by Nancy Bond
Publisher: Atheneum
Hardcover, 371 pages
Used Price: $9.00 (1 in stock) Condition Policy

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When David Morgan accepted a teaching post for a year at the University of Wales, his children—twelve-year-old Peter, and ten-year-old Becky—had to go with him. Fifteen-year-old Jen followed soon after. The change from Amherst, Massachusetts to a small village on the Welsh coast called for all sorts of adjustments, especially since their father, newly widowed, submerged himself totally in his work, forgetting that they too missed their mother greatly. Things might have worked out, except for Peter—stubborn, lonely, hating everything—who had discovered a strange, ancient object that he eventually identifies as the tuning key for the harp of Taliesin, the great sixth-century bard who had lived in that part of Wales. Gradually, the key draws Peter back in time as he experiences important and dramatic events in Taliesin's life—and he is pulled further away from his family with whom he cannot share this.

The mounting tension of Peter's recurring revelations from the key, the vivid reality of the children's daily life during a cold, wet Welsh winter, the agonizing anxieties of Peter's sisters as they realize the family will disintegrate totally unless Peter and their father can be brought close again, and the ultimate part the key plays in uniting the Morgans once more in understanding and love combine to make a haunting, memorable story that readers will finish with infinite reluctance.

from the dust jacket

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