On the Wasteland

Betony Alison Craig, an orphan living at the Brackenbury Children's Home in Suffolk, keeps her loneliness in check and the world at bay by withdrawing further and further into a world of fantasy and dreams in this later Ruth M. Arthur title. Betony's feelings of recognition when she first sees the Wasteland - a desolate territory by the salt marshes - her sense of connection to the land and its history, create a place of refuge to which she withdraws at every opportunity. As Betony begins to witness ghostly echoes of the past, first seeing a Viking long-ship, then hearing the actual voices of those long-ago invaders, she becomes more and more enmeshed in the past...

In On the Wasteland, Arthur delivers an interesting variation on her show more usual theme of a heroine whose entanglement with the past allows her to grapple with her present-day problems, in that she seems to be putting forward the idea that too deep a connection to the past can be more dangerous than helpful. The story has a neat symmetry to it, with the echoes of the past saving Betony from her early isolation and her growing friendships saving her from the past. show less

I would have been so happy to read this book back when I was a teen whose reading was restricted to what she could find at the public library and the crappy chain bookstore at the mall. I read "A Candle in Her Room" and "Requiem for a Princess" over and over and over, over the years...

The one other review here on LT about this book hit it dead on: this is all about the haunting atmosphere.... and for me, the evocative line drawings by Margery Gill. The story holds up well enough that I will make time to savor this one.

A young orphan discovers a dream world which allows her to escape the unpleasant realities of everyday life in the orphanage, but her intense attachment to fantasy almost ends in disaster.