Rose’s new home is luxurious – food appears as if by magic, beautiful fabrics and looms appear and occupy Rose’s thoughts, and two quiet servants make sure all of her needs are tended to. Over land and sea, Rose and her great white bear travel until they reach an enchanted castle carved into a mountainside of ice and rock. And, when Rose learns that her birth nature was a lie and that she is truly a wild and wanderlust-filled Northern daughter, she makes up her mind to leave her home behind. She’s never fit in with the domestic, provincial life her family has, and she’s thrilled at the prospect of adventure and the unknown. While Rose’s family (with the exception of her mother) are adamant against her going, Rose is fascinated and excited. Over the years, Rose’s family situation grows ever more destitute and precarious…and one desperate night as her elder sister Sara lies deathly ill, a great white bear (Rose’s supposedly imaginary friend from childhood) appears and offers an irresistible exchange: Sara’s health and the family’s success…for Rose. Throughout her childhood, Ebba Rose (though, to her father she is always Nyamh Rose for her true Northern nature) is adventurous, brash, and ever-wandering, much to the fear of her protective mother and older brother Neddy. But when their eighth child, Rose comes into the world, she is delivered facing the dreaded North – a mistake that Rose’s mother makes sure to cover up and never speak of again, much to Rose’s father’s guilt. After the death of their steadfast, East-born daughter, Eugenia is determined to have another East-facing child. At least, that is what I told myself.Įast is the story of a mapmaker turned farmer, his superstitious wife, and their seven children. But everyone called her Rose rather than Ebba, so the lie didn’t matter.
After reading Ice by Sarah Beth Durst earlier this year, I was on the lookout for other retellings, and Edith Pattou’s East was the title that kept popping up.Įbba Rose was the name of our last-born child. Why did I read this book: The “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” retelling is becoming a popular one, and it’s a tale that I’m rather fond of. In solving that mystery, she loses her heart, discovers her purpose, and realizes her travels have only just begun.Īs familiar and moving as “Beauty and the Beast” and yet as fresh and original as only the best fantasy can be, East is a novel retelling of the classic tale “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” a sweeping romantic epic in the tradition of Robin McKinley and Gail Carson Levine. The bear takes Rose to a distant castle, where each night she is confronted with a mystery. So when an enormous white bear mysteriously shows up and asks her to come away with him–in exchange for health and prosperity for her ailing family–she readily agrees. Rose has always felt out of place in her family, a wanderer in a bunch of homebodies.
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