Hush by Donna Jo Napoli

It was a new type of story for me. I prefer the fun adventures and then a happy ending. This is a reason to cry every few pages, although I did not...much. The plot is rather easy to sum up; an Irish princess is kidnapped and put into slavery. Such things happened all the time, but the little twist of this is that the girl stays silent all throughout her slavery and is thought to be an enchantress. This is based on a true story, one from 900 AD. Melkorka is her name but it is hardly said because most of the people in the book don't know that is her name.
I loved this book. It drew me into the story so much that I would go away and feel the need to keep silent myself. The beginning of the book has such a different girl than the one at the end, which is right but is also painful. It made me think about human nature and how different we can be and how the differences happened. As a historical fiction book, it drew me into a time that we don't know all too much about. I like history but I couldn't think of what was going on in 900 AD other than it being the Dark Ages.
Some of the things the people in the story did made me wonder what they were thinking; some of it was explained as wisdom but I'm afraid that the rest was pulling at straws in desperation. Honestly I haven't been to the point of desperation so I have nothing to judge their actions against. All of the slaves she knows well really teach me how to do any kind of good a person is capable of, even if they aren't allowed to do anything at all. A great book for anyone to read and learn from.