Wild Angel

After spending weeks traveling west to join the Gold Rush in California, 3-year-old Sarah McKensie witnesses her mother and father's cold-blooded murder by the members of their newly founded homestead. Mother Nature and fate protect the little one, equipping her with extraordinary survival methods. But Sarah's future involves additional chilling events and enemies she hardly suspects. Numerous pioneers are brought to life by Bernadette Dunne, who identifies them carefully via hard-hitting personality traits reflective of the panhandler days and the dynamic nature of the people they galvanized. Amazingly, Dunne provides lightening-fast transitions from person to person and scene to scene, providing continuity between characters and painting the colorful action. Dunne and this story are perfect together. B.J.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

July 31, 2000
Murphy's previous novel, There and Back Again, paid homage to Frank L. Baum's Oz books. Her latest volume continues the tradition, this time looking back to Edgar Rice Burroughs's legendary Tarzan series (plus a good dash of Mark Twain). Rachel and William McKenzie are hopeful settlers in the gold fields of 1850 California, but their dreams are cut short when they're murdered in their camp not far from the boomtown of Selby. Avoiding death by hiding in a cave, their three-year-old daughter, Sarah, finds that her survival afterward depends upon the wolf pack that adopts her. Sarah avoids humanity for many years, until a chance encounter and subsequent friendship with a young Indian woman shows her that not all people are to be feared. When she saves a family in winter-shrouded Donner Pass, Sarah earns the name "The Wild Angel," but keeps to the land until she meets journalist and adventurer Max Phillips, who has been haunted by her since the day he discovered her parents' bodies but couldn't find their little girl. Sarah's friendship with Max grows over the seasons in secret, for Max suspects that the man who killed her parents is still nearby. When the secret slips out, Sarah must face her enemy and extract justice as the wolf pack has taught her. In an afterword, Murphy cites Burroughs's "shameless use of coincidence" to "arrange the characters to his liking," which is clearly the case here. This novel, lightweight compared to Murphy's earlier work, functions best as an engaging summer read.

September 1, 2006
Gr 9 Up -Pat Murphy -s tale (Tor Books, 2000; pap. 2001) of a girl raised by northern California wolves in the mid-1800 -s overflows with natural and human dangers. While camping, Sarah -s gold prospecting parents are murdered by a robber named Jasper. Unable to locate the three-year-old child before he leaves the desecrated camp, Jasper pursues Sarah through the years. Sarah is taken in by a wolf pack and reared as one of their own. In early childhood, she makes contact with both natives and white settlers, but returns to the wild after each brief meeting, usually accompanied by her littermate, Beka. Across the years, Jasper and Sarah -s lives cross with Max, a lonely artist who notifies Sarah -s distant aunt of her survival, and various Western townies. Sarah becomes a folklore character, noted for her sudden appearances when immigrants along the Sierra trails need rescuing. All the stories converge when Sarah temporarily joins a traveling circus. Bernadette Dunne reads with authority, differentiating the voices of some characters with changes in tone, pitch, and accent. The story of the Wild Angel of the Sierras veers toward melodrama without fully losing its strain of credible history. Chapter headings quoting Mark Twain -rendered in a fair echo of his craggy tone -keep listeners grounded in Sarah -s world. In addition to lots of action, this historical fantasy deals with the role of women and the reality of life in the West. -"Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA"

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