There is a strong narrative line of young people’s literature from Great Britain that courses over empire and into the modern day. You can trace it with your finger, from Lewis Carroll to Kipling, to William Golding, and J.K. Rowling. The Summer Sacrifice by Holly Hinton takes its rightful place beside them. Hinton exceeds Rowling in her grasp of the fragility of the adolescent psyche. The present world is often terrifying to a sensible adult. Hinton reflects its effect on youngsters in a powerfully imagined world that hums with poetry. In its pages, in the words of Yeats, a terrible beauty is born.

Adolescents are in search of identity. Hinton grasps it, profoundly, and in The Summer Sacrifice, a character can morph into something longed for and realize “the significance of her growing reflection just in time…I found you, nose…I quite like you face.” Herein lies empathy,  barreling adventure and an iconic heroine, Jamie Tuff.

But herein also lies the greatness of British storytelling and proof that it is imperishable.