Master storyteller Kelly Barnhill (When Women Were Dragons; The Ogress and the Orphans; The Girl Who Drank the Moon) offers an evocative and darkly beautiful fairy tale for the modern age in The Crane Husband. A determined and pragmatic 15-year-old girl lives with her family at the edge of what was once their family farm, now a corporatized set of fields watched over by electronic drones. Ever since her father's death, the girl has taken care of her sensitive younger brother and watched over her passionate, enigmatic mother. When her mother, a famed weaver of beautiful tapestries, brings home a tall, cruel and conniving crane, and tells her children to call him "Father," the girl will do whatever it takes to rescue her family from his hypnotic grip.
Barnhill's exceptional talent for threading together imaginative worlds and emotionally resonant characters is on full display in this updated twist on a Japanese folktale. The girl's first-person narration grounds even the more incredible elements of the story, not only because of her character's practicality but also because of her clear-eyed dedication to those she loves. But while the crane man remains the target of the girl's wrath, Barnhill's subtle direction allows the mother's own flickering form to come into focus and centers a nuanced and often heartbreaking relationship between mother and daughter. Ultimately, it is the story's unresolved tensions--between pragmatism and passion, family legacy and freedom, art and commerce, old and new--that succeed in making readers' throats tighten. Barnhill crafts a tale that is both unbelievable and all too real. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor