The Old Country

The Old Country by Mordicai Gerstein

This is storytelling at it's finest, with vivid detail that leaves you feeling like you've just gotten lost in an enchanted wood and witnessed some very peculiar things, talking animals, fairies elves and the like, a goose who can lay golden eggs and a young girl on a mission to set things right.

I loved it!

Here's the summary:

The Old Country is a novel of singular insight and imagination set in a land where "every winter was a hundred years and every spring a miracle... where the water was like music and the music was like water... where all the fairy tales come from, where there was magic - and there was war." There, Gisella stares a moment too long into the eyes of a fox, and she and the fox exchange shape. Gisella's quest to get her girl-body back takes her on a journey across a war-ravaged country that has lost its shape. She encounters sprites, talking animals, a chicken that lays a golden egg, a court with a spider for a judge -- and bloodshed, destruction and questions of power and justice. Finally, looking into the eyes of a fox once more, she faces a strange and startling choice about her own nature.

The Old Country is at once timeless and contemporary - a tale that draws on a wealth of storytelling tradition and dramatizes the question of what it is to be human. Part adventure story, part fable; exciting, beautifully told, rich in humor and wisdom, it is the work of an artist and storyteller at the height of his powers.