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This brief well-written middle-grade novel focuses on 13-year-old Kiri, an indigenous girl. At age 5, when her parents do not return to the family tent during a snowstorm, she is brought to a village by a couple (from another aboriginal group) who have happened upon her while out hunting. From early childhood, Kiri has had the ability to enter into the bodies of animals and view the world through their eyes. She can also pick up on the emotions of other humans. In her new home, she is adopted by an elderly “singer��/healer/shaman, Mali, to whom she becomes deeply attached. He trains her in healing practices and in the use of herbs.

Over the eight years Kiri has been with him, Mali has grown weak, and now there is talk among the elders of sending the girl out on her vision quest at an unusual time of the year—early winter. The tribe cannot function without a healer, and it is essential that there is someone to take on the role when Mali dies. Within this tribe, the vision quest is intended to reveal to the young person his or her true name and calling. Kiri knows she possesses the requisite gifts to be a healer. She’s sensitive to voices on the wind, for example, and she strongly senses the pain of others. However, she fears the suffering that overtakes her when she is near sick people, and she resists her fate. Mali makes clear that it is Kiri's responsibility to leave on the quest that will usher her into adulthood. Out of love for him, she leaves, travelling far from her familiar surroundings, as he has counselled her to do. On her journey, she has mysterious dreams in which voices call her name across a wide lake. She also endures a number of physical challenges (view spoiler)[ including the capsizing and wreck of her canoe and winter storms (hide spoiler)]. After healing an injured “wolken”—wolf��(all the animal species in the story are given fantastical names), Kiri and the wild canid become friends. In fact, “Cloud Shadow��, as she calls him, becomes her spirit animal, guarding her and the makeshift “wellan”—wigwam—she’s created. He brings her small animals for food and sleeps beside her. The climax of the novel turns on Kiri’s interaction with a village boy a year older than she. Kiri has always been wary of Garen. A dark cloud seems to hang over his head, and Kiri senses something frightening and disturbing within him that drives him to act with cruelty. Like her, he is resistant to hearing his true name and calling, and, since his first vision quest was unsuccessful, he is sent out on a second at the same time Kiri is.

Rather than write an anthropologically accurate novel, Root has opted for a safer fantasy approach. There’s nothing particularly magical about the plot elements; it’s in the naming of animals that Root signals that even though this appears to be our world, it isn’t quite. I honestly found the odd names for recognizable animals distracting and irritating. Root does provide a glossary, however, for readers who might have trouble keeping track.

This is a nice little novel and it includes some effective black-and-white illustrations by Dennis McDermott, which help young readers to better envision the setting. Characterization is not a strong point, and there are gaps in people’s backstories. Kiri recalls that she and her parents were once part of a village, but for some unknown reason the family is living in a tent well away from their tribe at the time of her father and mother’s disappearance. How Garen came to be alone and troubled is also a mystery. Having said all that, I still enjoyed the novel and believe kids would, too.

Rating 3.5 rounded down