The Village Sang to the Sea

A Locus Recommended fantasy novel and Cybils-Award nominee

During the Cold War a 13-year-old American boy, Brad Lattimer, moves with his family to a fishing village in Northern Italy. It is no ordinary village. But Brad is welcomed like a long-lost cousin. His teacher is a gentle hunchback with a lisp who is more than he seems to be; and there are witches in the olive groves who will poison your cat, but not for the reasons you imagine. In those same groves there is a village so small it shouldn't be a village, its red doorways too short for normal men to pass through easily; and at night, on its narrow cobble street, creatures that should not exist walk while a single baby cries forever. On the sands of the next cove sits a pale girl who somehow knows the poetry of the great Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and wants you to drown with her, just as Percy drowned near this village over a century ago. This is the village where Brad, too, will start to dream strange dreams and write his first stories; where, he will fall sick because the village's magic has a hold on him: It wants him to become something other than a boy--something that can never leave it--something it can have as its own forever.

About the Author
Bruce McAllister is best known for his science fiction, fantasy and literary fiction. Over the decades his short stories have appeared in the fantasy and science fiction field's major magazines, themed anthologies, "year's best" anthologies (like Best American Short Stories 2007, edited by Stephen King), college textbooks and literary quarterlies; won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and Glimmer Train; and been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula and New Letters awards. He is the author of two earlier novels, Humanity Prime and the 80's genre classic Dream Baby, and a career-spanning short story collection, The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories. He has served on juries for the Nebula, James Tiptree and Philip K. Dick awards and for a number of years was associate editor of the Harry Harrison/Brian Aldiss BEST SF anthology series. Three of his short stories are currently under option for films. He lives in southern California with his wife, choreographer Amelie Hunter, and is a full time writer, writing coach and book and screenplay consultant.