She transcends.ĭuring our phone interview, I read her this passage from that book: When Jordan uses words like “elated” and “awe” sincerely, without shying from them, she strips away the trivia. Radiance, triumph, joy: it’s everywhere, in all the slow smiles and sweet jokes and furs and fires and rituals. ‘She looked into his eyes and saw that he was smiling, radiant and there was so much love in him, so much triumph and joy, that she looked away again, unable to bear it.’ It’s there in a last farewell between lovers Gabriel and Ashila, in the confronting, astonishing Secret Sacrament: It’s there in Tanith, running with the wolves. It’s there in The Juniper Game, in a golden moment when Dylan and Juniper realise they can commune telepathically. The notes from them do be like silver birds, flying on the wind.’ It’s also there in Rocco, the 13th book Jordan wrote and the first to be published, when a dying girl whispers ‘I do be scared’, and the teenaged hero cradles her, and says: ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of… Listen to Jakob’s pipes. …every page of her books for young adults carries that sense of a powerful, meaningful peace – one that’s right there if youstop and listen. And although Jordan writes stories of turmoil and injustice, dragons and battles and plagues, every page of her books for young adults carries that sense of a powerful, meaningful peace – one that’s right there if you stop and listen.
Sometimes then it seemed as if my heart beat with the firestone heart, and I felt a oneness with the rock.’ Then I’d hear the soft breathing of the darkness, the throb and hum of the deep earth itself, the power of the firestones all around. ‘And sometimes – some blessed, awesome times – there was a brief space where no sound was. She hears snatches of conversation, a child wailing, the thud of other picks. She works in a coal mine with a pick and a basket, wriggled deep into a seam, lying on her back in warm water. It makes my stupid brain shut up and be still for a moment.Ī quarter-century on, this book still pulls the same trick it used to when I was an anxious, lonely kid. A quarter-century on, this book still pulls the same trick it used to when I was an anxious, lonely kid. Elsha rolls her eyes.Įlsha is the name of the woman – firebrand, lionheart – you get to inhabit when you read Sherryl Jordan’s 1993 YA Winter of Fire.
I wanted my boy to be a girl, just so I could call her Elsha.’ ‘Oh, it’s just a character from a book I really like…’ I’m at a kid’s birthday party at McDonald’s and comprehensively hating it – the small talk, the noise, the lights – when a woman introduces her daughter.
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