Sunwaifs Author:Sydney J. Van Scyoc Nadd, Corrie, Trebb, Feliss, Ronna, Herrol - conceived during a sunstorm on the planet Destiny, they are the sole survivors of 300-odd babies. And as children of the entire community - settled by pilgrims on harsh ground - they are reared together in Sunwaif Cottage. But their solitude, their isolation, is their undoing, for without parents, the... more »y find kinship in each other - and, most important, to the vast powers of nature.
For the Sunwaifs are not normal. One is sickly; another grows to resemble a young bull; one is both male and female; another is birdlike; another perpetually moving, with plants & vines growing near his feet.
When the pilgrims had settled Destiny a few hundred years before, the name reflected their hopes for the planet. Yet the land's biggest yield was hardship. Native webgrass choked out the crops; violent rains flooded the fields; and the spores from the beautiful mosses and fungi caused madness & suicide among humans & animals. The surviving pilgrims' descendants grew stern & joyless, as harsh as the land they lived on.
As Destiny, their planet, had condemned the pilgrims, so they condemn the Sunwaifs, seeing the children as punishment for the community's transgressions.
The strange children grow and thrive, and recognize that they are different from the others. Corrie, born a hermaphrodite but apparently made normal by surgery, seems to delight in destruction; she, more than the other Sunwaifs, senses that her true parents are the forces of nature. And as the Sunwaifs grow to realize their own alien powers, only one man discovers the secret they harbor - which is the key to human survival on Destiny.
An exciting story of mutant children and human adaptation on a hostile planet.
Great for age, with a good paper jacket. Book Club Edition.« less