The Marrow of the World

While Phillip and his adopted cousin, Linda, are rowing their boat across the lake where they are vacationing for the summer, they see something impossible. A castle is sunk in the water that no one else can see, and which vanishes when they dive to investigate. When they return during the night to investigate further, their boat is seized by unknown forces and propelled up a river into another world. There the two children meet Herne, a woodsman who tells them the story of the battle between the good king Kyril Tessarion, and the evil witch, Morgan. An unseen power separates them from Herne, and the children find themselves in the clutches of the witch Ygerna, daughter of Morgan, who claims Linda is really from this world, the last daughter of the witch Morgan. Ygerna sends the children on a dangerous quest for The Marrow of the World, which is deep within the dwarfs' mountain stronghold. Great danger and personal growth are in store for the two cousins as they go after the marrow and try to return home. Much better than Nichols other adventure novel, A Walk out of the World, but still a little lacking in resonance.

I read this book in elementary school, and looked for it for years afterwards. I finally picked it up a few years ago and found that, unlike many of the books I read as a kid, this one actually held up to being read as an adult. A story, like many others, of children in another world. Not a terribly complicated story, but a convincing one, with stong elements of strangeness and sadness.