Octavia Randolph · 2016 · coming-of-age

The saga steps sideways to tell one man's life. Tindr is born deaf on Gotland, the son of the brew-house keeper Rannveig, and grows into the finest hunter on the island - shut out from the speech of those around him, but at home in the greenwood and in the service of Freyja, whose white hind moves through his woods. The book turns on the arrival of two strangers at the trading town: the Welsh-Saxon Ceridwen and the Dane Sidroc, who build their hall at Tyrsborg above the bay and give Tindr a place in a family. Its geography is small and deep - a stretch of eastern Gotland coast, the woods behind it, and the water crossing west to Oland.

1. 1
   Tindr's home, the trading town

   Rannveig's brew-house on the bay of the trading town, where ships come in over the season and Tindr grows up among traders whose talk he cannot hear. The greenwood behind is his true country: he snares rabbits, takes stags and boar with bow and arrow, and gives Freyja her due for every beast. Devoted parents cannot protect him from the bully who taunts him, nor from a jealousy that turns murderous.

2. 2
   Tyrsborg

   The hall Ceridwen and Sidroc raise on the height above the bay. Tindr's silent world alters at their coming: here he finds work, welcome and a family that troubles itself to be understood by him. Randolph's own Gotland sheets place Tyrsborg on this eastern shore, and her Roma and Paviken markers georeference to within a kilometre of the real places - this island is the most precisely drawn ground in the whole saga.

3. 3
   Thorkel's Farm, Oland

   West across open water to the long low island of Oland, the one place Randolph's Tindr sheet marks beyond Gotland itself. The crossing is the widest thing in a book otherwise measured in woods and shorelines.