Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin [FIRST EDITION • FIRST PRINTING] 2004 • Harcourt

Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin 

FIRST EDITION / FIRST PRINTING [2004] HARCOURT

Hardcover with dust jacket in very good condition.  Front flyleaf sealed to front cover.  Reads like new.  Dust jacket housed in a new HQ brodart jacket protector.

In this beautifully crafted novel, the first of the Annals of the Western Shore trilogy, Ursula K. Le Guin writes of the proud cruelty of power, of how hard it is to grow up, and of how much harder still it is to find, in the world's darkness, gifts of light.

Scattered among poor, desolate farms, the clans of the Uplands possess gifts. Wondrous the ability—with a glance, a gesture, a word—to summon animals, bring forth fire, move the land. Fearsome They can twist a limb, chain a mind, inflict a wasting illness. The Uplanders live in constant fear that one family might unleash its gift against another.

Two young people, friends since childhood, decide not to use their gifts. One, a girl, refuses to bring animals to their death in the hunt. The other, a boy, wears a blindfold lest his eyes and his anger kill.