The Earth Hums in B Flat
Mari Strachan

Every night, 12-year-old Gwenni Morgan flies in her sleep. She leaves the bed she shares with her sister and soars into the night sky, listening to the nighttime sounds of her small Welsh village below. Irrepressible Gwenni — a dreamer full of unanswerable questions and unbounded curiosity — is childlike yet touchingly adult. Reluctantly facing a modern world, she prefers her nightly flights to school and her chores. Blessed with the uncommon insight of a young girl, Gwenni’s view of the world is unparalleled.

Quaint, odd, touched, funny in the head: Gwenni is all too familiar with the taunts of her peers and fields them with equanimity beyond her years. She knows she can no more change her nature than stop the sun from rising. And when a neighbor goes missing, Gwenni turns amateur sleuth, determined to solve the mystery of his disappearance. Little does she realize that the trail she’s pursuing will bring her uncomfortably close to home, and a dark secret.

Vivid, imaginative, yet remarkably unsentimental, The Earth Hums in B Flat is a transporting debut. Strachan has created a magical character in Gwenni — bighearted, inquisitive, and charming as all get-out. Her special way of looking at the world and her ability to transform the ordinary in the extraordinary are poetically rendered in this remarkable story of family, duty, understanding, and forgiveness.

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