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The Gatherer, by Kit Trzebunia

  • seaybookdragon
  • Apr 2, 2024
  • 2 min read

I’m excited to review a book by an author I actually know!

 

In the country of Moran there’s a song that only appears when the country of Moran is in trouble. It speaks of a voice of command and a gatherer who bring healing to the country.

 

When it wends its way into Peregrine’s life, she finds it compelling. She is growing up without her father, who mysteriously chose to wade into the middle of a raging river and vanished. She’s dealing with an opinionated and controlling stepmother, grieving her father, watching her home be mismanaged, learning to become a warrior without her stepmother’s blessing—and, most estranging of all, hiding her secret from even those she is close to. She can read the minds of animals.

 

In the middle of all this, comes a prince. Peregrine’s stepmother thinks he would be a fine catch for her daughter, Peregrine’s stepsister. The neighboring country thinks he would be a good pawn to use to destroy the country of Moran. And when Peregrine finds herself drawn into his closest circle, she finds that that song that reappears in Moran only when there is trouble might have more to do with her life, and her country, than she ever imagined.

 

In American fiction we are obsessed with grittiness. Story after story is peopled with despair, dysfunction, and misery. I have felt slightly embarrassed to write a happy ending before, for fear that I’ll come across as naïve. But that’s a horrible warping of reality, at least from a Christian perspective. There is hope, all is not skewed and soured. In a world of storytelling that prizes moral grey areas, Trzebunia’s book presents a story that never loses sight of hope, never muddies truth, and still manages to avoid becoming a surface level morality tale.

 

Peregrine struggles with honoring her stepmother and her father’s wishes when she does not understand them or disagrees with them, but she has many adults in her life pointing her to make wise choices, which in turn, drive the excellent conclusion to the book. And the development of the relationship between her wise father and her somewhat shallow stepmother is especially poignant, even though they aren’t the main characters.

 

I will say that sometimes The Gatherer strays into being a little too full of well-adjusted, kind and loving people who always make the right choices. Real evil is not always across the border in magical, far away people. And while the break from naturalistic despair that The Gatherer offers is refreshing and welcome, it wouldn’t be distorting the truth to show that broken things and bad choices can be made beautiful as well.

 

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