Price £4.99
ISBN 0 7459 4890
Published by LION May 2004
www.lionhudson.com
Purchase on Amazon.co.uk

Tony’s mum is dying and there’s nothing he can do about it. He can’t always put on a brave face and his dad won’t talk about things. Only Clare seems to understand – somehow she helps keep him together.

Then Tony finds an injured seagull, a creature he can nurse back to health.

And slowly, gradually, Tony begins to understand that death can sometimes bring freedom.

Formerly published as I Carried You On Eagles’ Wings (Published by Andre Deutsch Ad Lib 1990 and by Scholastic Point 1995)

Review from ‘Junior Bookshelf’:
Sue Mayfield has not made it easy for young Tony Sharp….For starters his Dad is a vicar which somehow imposes on him different standards of behaviour from those expected of his mates. Then his Mum who has been crippled with MS ever since he can remember is dying although Tony cannot bring himself to reply to sympathetic enquiries after her with anything other than a desperate and defiant ‘She’s fine.’ Then a leg injury at football keeps him out of the team and he has to limp clumsily in his plaster cast through half the book. There are two other strands which lighten the sombre hues of this richly worked tapestry. Tony finds a seagull with a broken wing which he nurses back to health -–a symbol of his own survival perhaps – and a sensitively drawn awareness of a developing friendship with Clare, a girl in his form.

Many writers might have been satisfied to work with one or two of these powerful themes but Sue Mayfield not only makes full use of each storyline, neatly dove-tailing them into a unified whole, but her technical skill ensures that the reader’s heart is moved to sympathy, and even tears, sharing the sense of loss experienced in their different ways by husband and son at the death of a wife and mother.

The cameos of minor characters such as teachers, classmates, parishioners and family helpers are sharp and forceful with the ring of truth which gives strength to the story. Tony’s puzzlement and misgivings at his awakening to Clare as a person rather than a mere classmate is brilliantly handled and could well stand on its own.
This thought-provoking, gentle but positive story has all the qualities which should ensure a wide and long-lasting readership.

Review from Times Educational Supplement
‘ This is a first novel, but there will surely be more from an author already writing with such an enviably assured touch.’

From Pembroke School Library Website:
‘ Sensitive issues tackled with unsentimentality. An interesting and moving read.’

From Zenith North TV Company:
‘ An extraordinary rites-of-passage story. A coming of age tale of love and loss and new life.’

I Carried You On eagles Wings was published in Holland in 1992 and was voted in the top 5 Children’s Books of that year by the Netherlands Kinderjury. It has been published in the USA and translated into Dutch, French, German and Danish.

On Eagles’ Wings was my first novel. When I started writing it I wasn’t sure if I could write or not so it felt a bit like jumping into a cold swimming pool!

The book is set on the north east coast where I grew up and many of the places – including Tony’s Dad’s church and the beach where Tony finds the injured seagull - are based on real places. When we lived in Bristol our next door neighbour had Multiple Sclerosis. She became a close friend and I was very struck by how bravely she faced her collapsing health. I also realised how powerless you can feel when someone you love is losing their battle with a devastating illness. Some of the things which happen to Tony’s mum are based on things that happened to my friend, and some of my own feelings are stirred into Tony’s character, although Tony and his family are completely fictional. I was interested in exploring what it would be like to have an ill or dying parent when you were fifteen and in the middle of more commonplace crises like spots and first dates and Maths homework!

I wanted Tony to be as ‘normal’ as possible so I made him like football and I gave him Gary as his best mate. U2 seemed an appropriate band for him to like because a lot of their songs are about grappling with life’s big questions – Where do I fit in? What am I looking for? Is there a God? - which seemed to resonate with Tony’s situation. The idea of the injured seagull came from playing around with metaphors of flight and wings (hence the title). And the ending…well, that was my husband Tim’s idea. He suggested it when we were sitting in a pub one day!

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