Blue Remembered Hills

In her gracious and moving 1983 memoir, the author of perennially prized historical fiction for youth (The Flowers of Adonis; The Changeling) recounts the enchantments and trials of her own coming of age. The only child of an often absent naval officer and a domineering bipolar mother, Sutcliff spent much of her itinerant and increasingly isolated early life in and out of hospitals, undergoing surgeries and often arduous therapies for Still’s disease, a rare and debilitating form of juvenile arthritis. Sutcliff addresses these challenges with the brave resiliency of one of her novels’ own heroes. She evokes the keenly observed joys and wonders of her widening world with an unforced humor, warmth, and frankness, an unflagging buoyancy that carries readers through the deeply poignant story of her gentle, doomed romance with a mercurial airman.