The Wanderer Scorned, by Natasha Woodcraft
I have had the privilege of ‘meeting’ Natasha a couple of times on Zoom, hearing her read an extract from her WIP and even singing Abba’s and Awan’s songs that appear in this book. Her invitation to take part in a blog tour to promote the book launch on 6th August 2022 thrilled me. I read the ARC out aloud to my wife – we were both captivated by it – and these are my impressions.
As the cover image implies, this is a deeply moving book. It explores interactions within a single family attempting to survive in a bountiful but unfamiliar world.
Setting
Affectionate frolics among the siblings alternate with bitter rivalry. Thorns, pests and predators impede their efforts at subsistence farming. And overshadowing all is everyone’s ambiguous relationship with their benevolent Creator, the ever-present but elusive Yahweh Elohim.
With her illustrious imagination and vivid language, the author constructs a lively family life, filling in many of the unknowns about everyday tasks and pastimes in that epoch. Washing clothes, learning to swim, catching fish, weaving baskets, domesticating sheep, irrigating fields, harvesting barley and wheat using stone tools, storing winter rations, fighting off wolves with sling and spear, enduring a swarm of locusts, treating infected wounds with a herbal salve – all these activities are undertaken for the first time and have to be mastered.
Story
For many years, Kayin, the eldest son, enjoyed a loving home, learning from his father how to cultivate the soil. New siblings add fun and additional duties, in time also introducing further complications. In particular, the twins, Havel – who opts for rearing sheep – and his charming sister Awan, seem to have an intimate relationship with Yahweh, which is foreign to Kayin. Jealousy and sexual desire kick in, and Kayin feels increasingly isolated and rejected.
The decisive incident – long anticipated with anguish by those readers who know the original story – occurs at the very end. Only then does the title make sense, as Kayin wanders off, scorned by all. This development whets the reader’s appetite for the promised sequel.
Conclusion
The prologue and epilogue of this book frame the entire narrative in the form of a spoken memoir, delivered by Kayin – by now a very old man – as an admonition to a gathering of his dissolute, godless offspring. This literary ploy is not entirely convincing, but doesn’t detract from what is a thrilling, eye-opening and heart-rending tale.
At the deepest level, the story leads the reader to examine their own faith in an inscrutable God.
Some other early reviews
- Brendan Conboy – A great debut novel
- Wendy H. Jones – The Wanderer Scorned – Christian Fiction
- Ginny Blankenship – The Wanderer Scorned
- Sheila Robinson – ‘The Wanderer Scorned’
- Maressa Mortimer – The Wanderer Scorned
- Susan Sanderson – The Wanderer Scorned
- Sophia Anyanwu – The Wanderer Scorned
- Joy Margetts – The Wanderer Scorned
- Ruth Leigh – The Wanderer Scorned