| Whoochka, a ten-year-old Syncobobian girl, is devastated when her little brother is lost across the Syncobobian/Hushmanian frontier, especially because it's her fault. When Yennie, her two-year-old brother, disappears into the inscrutable land of Hushman, the Syncobobians must launch an expedition through the wilderness and across the border to the provincial capital of Hceeps to save the lost child. The chain reaction of events caused by their arrival--a mother's impassioned grief and resolve serving as the catalyst--creates a civil crisis in a land grown brittle with superstition and self-delusion. To save Yennie and her mother, Whoochka's path must lead to Sshhusshh, Hushman's cosmopolitan capital, and eventually into the presence of the humane, vain, brilliant and doomed Lord of Whispers at the end of his long and extraordinary life. As a result, and through her own courage, Whoochka succeeds to become briefly the tenuous ruling authority of a ruined nation. Yennie, however, remains beyond the Syncobobians' reach, his destiny vested in the hands of a Hushmanian 'doojie-boy,' a provincial teen rebel who must overcome the limitations of his culture to save Yennie, and to find his own humanity. This tale for readers of all ages combines a robust adventure and stirring fantasy that echoes the conflicts in our world, with a meditation on the way language shapes our ideas and our lives. |
