A fantasy novel for kids thirteen to sixteen.
WHITE MIDNIGHT, a fantasy novel for teens, is a prequel to FIREGOLD. It is set on Greengard Orchard four hundred years before Jonathon Brae’s time and is about his ancestors.
Rose Chandler, a fifteen-year-old bondgirl who lives on Greengarden Orchard (in Jonathon’s time called Greengard), fears everything: the dark, the moon, other people, and the Dalriadas from the Red Mountains who are at war with the Valley folk. But Rose especially fears the Thing locked in the attic of the Bighouse, home of Mr. Brae, the master of Greengarden.
Rose loves Greengarden and dreams of saving it from Mr. Brae's neglect. That love gives her the courage to confront her fears one by one, until at last she comes face-to-face with the Thing in the attic. There, when Rose lights a candle in the dark, a nightmare beyond her worst imagining comes true, and she learns Mr. Brae has betrayed her. Then the Thing--and the intensifying war--present Rose with a terrible dilemma. Will she have to give up the land she loves in order to save it?
Dia Calhoun's compelling, sometimes mystical story of Rose's journey from girl to young woman is a mesmerizing prequel to the acclaimed fantasy adventure FIREGOLD.
I first had the idea for WHITE MIDIGHT while I was writing FIREGOLD. Jonathon's grandmother, Sephonie Cassan, had a vision. She saw a girl scrubbing a wooden floor on her hands and knees. Something startled the girl, and she looked up, frightened. That vision never made its way into FIREGOLD, but it was the seed for WHITE MIDNIGHT. That vision opens chapter two of WHITE MIDNIGHT.
WHITE MIDNIGHT was also inspired by my in-laws' commercial apple and pear orchard in the Methow Valley in Eastern Washington (farm photos). I thought about the story a long time before I had a chance to write it, so when I finally did write it, it came out rather quickly. I wrote the rough draft in six weeks. Writing the next few drafts took me two years.
