This one just didn't do it for me. Lowry deploys an unusual structure in this work, speaking as herself and about her own history for approximately 1/3 of the entire book. In these parts she primarily discusses her interest in the Windeby Girl (a German bog body) and her decision to write an imaginary history for the Windeby Girl and then, when it was discovered that the Windeby Girl was actually a Windeby Boy, a second imaginary history for that long dead young man. The rest of the work is divided into two stories about Estrild, a girl who wishes to be the first female warrior of her people, and Varick, a disabled orphan boy. In both stories Estrild and Varick know one another and live in the same community populated by the same people. Estrild's story is perhaps more interesting, although still inevitable and tragic, while Varick's story feels unpolished and haphazard.

More unsettling was the decision to continually use the only disabled character (and, it seems, the only disabled person in the entire community) as, essentially, a stepping stone for other characters. In Estrild's story, Varick's entire functional use in the story is to prepare Estrild for the upcoming new warrior ceremony and, later, to provide her with a blindfold as they take her off to die. Given she gave him the strip of cloth shortly before, it feels like he is literally being used as a clotheshorse and nothing else. He is friendless beyond Estrild, whose relationship with Varick is largely transactional. In Varick's own story he acknowledges that Estrild is kind to him but is not really a friend. His story focuses almost entirely on how his study of nature enabled him to recognize how to assist his injured employer and then, his master saved, he suddenly and inexplicably sickens and dies. (Spoiler: Seriously, he becomes randomly sick seconds after performing an apparently previously unknown joint relocation procedure for his boss then crawls off to die in a bog?!). Apparently Varick was only interesting when he could be of service to his able bodied community members. I was initially excited to see disabled representation in a historical novel for kids, but that "representation" ended up just using a disabled body to further the interests and plots of able-bodied people. This was, to say the least, disappointing.

I loved how Lowry took the discovery of a body found in peat and gave multiple stories of what could have happened to this child. Informative book that kids will love.