about the book
In a survival story that spans nearly fifty years, we follow Little Hawk, an eleven-year-old member of the Pokanoket tribe of the Wampanoag Nation. The tale is also a historical drama about John Wakely, a ten-year-old Pilgrim boy. It begins in 1620 near the settlement Plymouth.
Little Hawk is at the age for his proving time. Armed with just a knife, tomahawk, and bow and arrows, he is sent off into the wilderness alone. For three moons, he will make a long winter’s journey to find his Manitou, his animal spirit guide. Many do not survive, but Little Hawk does.
When he returns, he finds his village decimated. Only his grandmother, Suncatcher, and his friend, Leaping Turtle, have survived the white man’s plague. Finding refuge with another tribe, Little Hawk has his first encounters with the local Pilgrims. Divided by culture and language, the natives and settlers find that tensions and violence are growing. When Little Hawk befriends John, both their lives are endangered.
When John’s father is crushed by a fallen tree, Little Hawk pulls his tomahawk to help. The Pilgrims mistake Little Hawks’ action as an attack, and the native boy is killed. But he is not gone. Trapped in this world, Little Hawk’s ghost continues to help John.
He teaches John the Algonquin language and customs. He is beside John as he grows into a man, learns a trade, marries, and turns from the Pilgrim’s bigotry to follow the more tolerant principles of Roger Williams. As both deal with the changes they are facing, the question remains, will Little Hawks’ spirit ever find rest?
about the author
Born in Buckinghamshire, England, four years before WW II started, Susan Copper spent six years of her childhood in an earthen bunker listening to German bombs dropping above. There was little to do but read, mostly fairy tales and fantasies.
With all the devastation above, she became very aware of good and evil. Those memories lead to a career as a Newbery and Carnegie award-winning author of children’s books, adult novels, and Emmy-nominated screenplays.
She grew up in a family that loved words. Her grandfather was a drama enthusiast who often quoted long monologues and took his children to the very first showing of “Peter Pan”. Her mother knew large chunks of Tennyson, Browning, and the Romantic poets by heart and her father sang. Susan began to write her biography at age fourteen. Both she and her brother became writers.
Susan went off to Oxford, where dons J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis taught her to believe in dragons. She turned to journalism and got a job at the London Sunday Times where she worked with Ian Fleming, who was starting to write his James Bond books. She interviewed everyone from film stars to presidents. In her spare time she wrote fantasies.
On assignment in the US, she met and married a professor from MIT. She was terribly homesick for Wales and London, which influenced her writing and inspired her award-winning The Dark is Rising series. That marriage eventually ended, and Susan met and married actor Hume Cronyn, which led to her career as a screenwriter. When Hume died eleven years ago, Susan moved closer to her children in Marshfield, Massachusetts. Little Hawk’s tidal marsh is located there, and she was inspired to write Ghost Hawk.
Source:
Author website
Author interview : Booktrust
Author video interview: Reading Rockets
Book trailer: Ghost Hawk
Also by Susan Cooper:
Victory. Margaret K. McElderry Books. 2006.
King of Shadows. Simon & Schuster. 1999.
The Dark Is Rising series. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1973-1977.
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