White Hart [Unknown Binding]

Nancy Springer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 3, 1983

Welcome to Isle, a land of fantasy that existed long before there were such things. Surrounded by vast oceans and dotted with thick forests, Isle was a land in which all beings lived together. There were gods and ghosts dwelling with the Old Ones, the wise ancient ancestors. During this period, The Book of Suns began its life, though little was known about its contents. The mighty marriage between Sun and Moon begins an adventure never seen before.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Unknown Binding: 222 pages
• Publisher: Pocket (February 3, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671473484
• ISBN-13: 978-0671473488
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,142,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"Conform, go crazy, or become an artist." I have a rubber stamp declaring those words, and they pretty much delineate my life. Conforming was the thing to do when I was raised, in the fifties. Even my mother, who spent her days painting animal portraits at an easel in the corner of the kitchen, tried to conform via housecleaning, bridge parties, and a new outfit every spring. My father, who was born into a British-mannered Protestant family in southern Ireland, emigrated to America as a young man and idolized the "melting pot" because at last he fit in. Once in a rare while he recited "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" or told a tale of a leprechaun, but most of the time he was an earnest naturalized American who expected exemplary behavior of his children. My mother was a charming Pollyanna who would not entertain negative sentiments in herself or anyone around her. As their only girl and the baby of the family, I was coddled, yet hardly ever got a chance to be other than excruciatingly good.

My "conform" phase lasted right into adulthood. When I was thirteen, my parents bought a small motel near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and I spent most of my teen years helping them make beds and clean rooms. I did not date until I went to college -- Gettysburg College, all of seven miles from home. it was the height of the sixties, and I grew my hair long, but eschewed pot, protests, and "happenings." Instead, I married a preacher's son who was himself conforming by studying for the ministry. Within a few years I was Rev. Springer's wife, complete with offspringers, living in a country parsonage in southern York County, PA.

Here beginneth the "go crazy" phase.

Because I had never been allowed any negative emotions, I began to hear "voices" in my head. First they whispered "divorce" (not permissible), and later they hissed "suicide". They scared me silly. I couldn't sleep; images of knives and torture floated in front of my eyes even during the daytime; something roared like an animal inside my ears; my wrists hurt; I saw blood seeping out of the walls; panic jolted me like a cattle goad out of nowhere. Is it necessary to add that I was clinically depressed? The doctor gave me Valium and sent me to a shrink. The shrink took me off the Valium and told me I had a problem with anger. (No duh.) The next doctor zombied me on the numbing antidepressants which were available at that time. The next shrink said I had an adjustment problem. And so on, for several years, during which I somehow managed to stay alive, take care of my kids, handle the vagaries of my husband, sew clothing and grow vegetables to get by financially, cook, can preserves, show up at church, do mounds of laundry and publish "The White Hart" and "The Silver Sun"--yet not one of the doctors of shrinks ever suggested that I might be a strong person, let alone a writer. All of them were intent on "helping" poor little me "adjust" to being a housewife, mother, and pastor's wife.

Eventually I became resigned to the fact (as I perceived it) that I was an evil, sinful person with horrible things going on inside my head, and I stopped trying to fix me. I stopped going to doctors or therapists. Somehow I found courage--or desperation--to stop trying to conform or adjust or live a role.

"I am going to start taking an hour or two first thing in the morning to do my writing," I said to my husband.

"Fine," he said. He had reached the point where he would agree with whatever to humor the neurotic wife; to him it was just another of my brain farts. But to me it was the most important sentence I ever spoke. With that statement I stopped being a housewife who sometimes stole time to write, and I started being a writer.

Conform, go crazy--or become an artist.

By becoming a writer--by becoming who I truly was--I became well.

It was so simple. Although it did take years, of course; it takes a long time for good things to grow. Trees. Books. Me. Odd thing about books; they not only nourish growth but show it happening. In "The Black Beast, The Golden Swan" and many other of my early novels, you can see me dealing with the yang/yin nature of good and evil, struggling to accept my own shadow. In "Chains of Gold" and "The Hex Witch of Seldom" I start writing as a woman, no longer identifying only with male main characters. In a number of children's books I come to terms with my own childhood. And in "Apocalypse"--whoa, what a fierce, dark fantasy novel, the first thing I wrote after my income from writing enabled my husband to leave the ministry. I hadn't thought of myself as repressed when I was a pastor's wife, but obviously something broke loose when I shed that role. "Larque on the Wing"--whoa again, another breakthrough book that spiraled straight out of my muddled middle-aged psyche and took me places I'd never dreamed were in me.

It's been a long time since those days when I thought I was an evil person. I know better now, and I love and trust me even to the extent of writing "Fair Peril"--a more perilous novel than I knew at the time, interfacing all too closely with my life. Written two years before the fact, it foresees my husband's infidelity and my divorce. The most painful irony I've ever faced is that once I gained my selfhood, I lost my lifelong partner. He had supported me through episodes that would have sent most men screaming and running, but once I became well and strong, he transferred his loyalty to a skinny, neurotic waif all to similar to the young woman I once was. After supporting him through twenty-seven years of stinky socks, automotive yearnings, miscellaneous foibles, and the career change that put him where she could cry on his shoulder, I found this a bit hard to take. But I wouldn't go back to being Ms. Pitiful. Not for anything.

Now married to a rather remarkable second husband, after living 46 years in Pennsylvania I moved in 2007 to the Florida panhandle, where I spent a year living in a small apartment above the aforementioned husband's hangar in an exceedingly rural (swamps, egrets, snakes and alligators) airport. Now we have a real house about a mile from the airport on higher ground featuring tremendously tall longleaf pine trees with rattlesnakes and scorpions underneath them. Life is an adventure and I mean that sincerely.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unselfish Love, Friendship, and Fantasy at its Best, September 30, 2000

By 

Rhomela I. Lindo (Philippines) - See all my reviews

This review is from: White Hart (Hardcover)

This is the enchanting story of three people, whose lives were interwoven by love, friendship, and desire for the destruction of evil. Set at the ancient times, when magic, nature, mortals and immortals exist together. The place itself, the Isle, gives readers the feel of the story--magical, lovely, nurturing, healing, but also foreboding and wicked. The presence of legendary creatures such as firedrakes, wyverns, the loyal red falcon and the pure white hart makes it more spell-binding. But what sets this story apart from other fantasy books is that the White Hart has successfully lifted the readers to a range of human emotions. Ellid's strength and faithfulness, Cuin's unselfishness and loyalty, and Bevan's courage, spirit, honor and despair. I have never seen nor heard of a man as lonely as Bevan. A mesmerizing tale that will leave you tearful, breathless, almost complete. I came across this book in 1991, and fell in love with the story and the characters. When it was accidentally lost by a friend, I searched for a copy but failed. Until 1998 when I learned of Amazon and finally found what I've been searching. The book is certainly worth the effort and the long wait.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Mythic Fantasy, November 6, 2003

By 

catfan13 "catfan13" (Columbus, OH United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: White Hart

Springer writes this book in such a why that you feel as if is a classic myth....The themes of love, hate, friendship, and overcoming The Evil are all there, just like any of the great myths of the Romans, Greeks, Norse, or Celts. Truly a classic fantasy. Also check out the related books (alas they maybe out of print, The Silver Sun and The Sable Moon) which form a loose series. I actually read The Sable Moon first, but if you wish to go in the "historical" order in which they occur, start with the White Hart. It will not disappoint. (For those interested in Celtic Mythology, there are MANY familiar things about these stories).

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love, honor, magic and evil........, December 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: White Hart (Hardcover)

A tale of love, honor and evil. Two lads meet in a land riddled with magic and the evil of a dishonest "king". The story has tinges of the magic of King Arthur - a lad looks within himself, with the help of his friend and a maiden, and finds power to fight evil. The characters are complete, and brings you into the story. You care what happens to each one. One of Springers' earlier works, it's not as polished as later works. The ending may not turn out as you thought, but it makes sense. This book ties in with later books (Silver Sun and Sable Moon), but you don't have to read it to understand the later stories. Regal and heartrending, absolutely worth a weekend to read.