A dramatic and moving story of an unlikely alliance between a young Viking girl and the African slave her father has given her. Left alone after her village is destroyed and her brother captured by raiding pirates, Freydis survives until her father returns. Bent on seeking out his missing son and avenging the destruction of his homeland, Freydis’s father takes her and Enno, the slave, on an increasingly desperate and dangerous mission. Julia Golding vividly recreates the harsh choices that govern life in the watery Viking world while also charting a tender relationship.
Freydis has been left for dead following a raid by pirates on her father's Viking stronghold. Her brother has been kidnapped-and Freydis's father is hell-bent on revenge. But this is a volatile man who loathes his daughter and is driven by love of his son. Reluctantly he takes Freydis with him on his journey, giving her a slave-Enno-to tend her. As Freydis's father becomes more bitter and cruel, and the hunt for his son becomes increasingly desperate, Freydis and Enno draw closer together. But when battle looms on the horizon, the bonds of friendship, obedience and loyalty are tested to the limit.
Julia Golding is the author of over thirty books for children and young adults. Her stories are set all over the world (and in some new worlds too) and span the centuries.
In her first year as a published author, she won the Nestlé Children’s Book Prize (Gold Award), was shortlisted for the Costa Children’s Book Award, longlisted for the prestigious Carnegie Medal, and won the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize. In the US, Secret of the Sirens won the honor book medal of the Green Earth Book Award. Dragonfly won the 2012 Beehive Book Award, Young Adult Division, given by the Children's Literature Association of Utah and voted on by readers in schools and public libraries.
She has sold over half a million books worldwide and they are translated into more than fifteen languages.
Julia Golding lives in Oxford with her husband and three children.
Click here to read a Q&A with the author from top children's publisher Egmont.
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