Uprooted
Uprooted is confidently wrought and sympathetically cast. I might even call it bewitching. Gregory Maguire, bestselling author of Wicked and Egg & Spoon
Our Dragon doesn t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human
sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one
of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we re grateful, but not that grateful.
Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over
her life.
Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten
years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.
The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows everyone knows that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isn t, and
her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her.
But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.
