Over the Sea's Edge.

Apple Lock / Abaloc #4

by Jane Louise Curry, Charles Robinson (Illustrator)

It was after he had found a curious silver medallion in a cave along the Ohio River that Dave began seeing the oddly dressed boy on the way to and from school. At first he envied his long hair and exotic clothes -- until he saw that they were both wearing identical medallions and the boy was in his own double. Envy turned to alarm, then panic when, accepting the boy's proffered medallion in exchange for his own, Dave changed places with him and was thrust eight hundred years back in time, to a castle in medieval Wales.

Genres: Fantasy, Time Travel

182 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 1971

About the author

Jane Louise Curry was born in East Liverpool, Ohio, on September 24, 1932. She is the daughter of William Jack Curry Jr. and Helen Margaret Curry. Curry grew up in Pennsylvania (Kittanning and Johnstown), but upon her graduation from college she moved to Los Angeles, California, and London, England.

Curry attended the Pennsylvania State University in 1950, and she studied there until 1951 when she left for the Indiana State College (now known as Indiana University of Pennsylvania). In 1954, after graduation, Curry moved to California and worked as both an art teacher for the Los Angeles Public School District and a freelance artist. In 1957, Curry entered the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) in order to study English literature, but in 1959 she left Los Angeles and became a teaching assistant at Stanford University. Curry was awarded the Fulbright grant in 1961 and the Stanford-Leverhulme fellowship in 1965, allowing her to pursue her graduate studies at the University of London. She earned her M.A. in 1962 and her Ph.D. in medieval English literature from Stanford University in 1969. From 1967-1968 and, again, from 1983-1984, Curry was an instructor of English literature at the college level. She became a lecturer in 1987. Besides her writings, Curry’s artworks are also considered among her achievements. She has had several paintings exhibited in London, and her works have even earned her a spot in the prestigious Royal Society of British Artists group exhibition. Among the many groups that Curry belongs to are the International Arthurian Society, the Authors Guild, the Children’s Literature Association, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers.

Curry illustrated and published her first book Down from the Lonely Mountain in 1965. This juvenile fiction based on Californian Native American folklore has paved the way for Curry’s expansive literary career. She has penned more than 30 novels, which are mostly based on child characters dealing with a wide variety of subjects. Many of Curry’s writings deal with folklore, such as the Native American folklore that she explores in her novels Turtle Island: Tales of Algonquian Nations and The Wonderful Sky Boat: And Other Native American Tales of the Southeast, and the retellings of famous European folk stories, such as Robin Hood and his Merry Men, Robin Hood in the Greenwood, and The Christmas Knight. Yet she also delves into the genres of fantasy, such as in her novels Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Time and Me, Myself, and I; historical fiction, such as in her novels What the Dickens and Stolen Life; and mystery, such as in her novels The Bassumtyte Treasure and Moon Window.

Curry has been honored with many awards throughout her writing career. In 1970, her novel The Daybreakers earned Curry the Honor Book award from the Book World Spring Children’s Book Festival and the Outstanding Book by a Southern California Author Award from the Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People. The Mystery Writers of America honored Curry two years in a row by awarding her the Edgar Allan Poe Award, or the Edgar, for Poor Tom’s Ghost in 1978 and The Bassumtyte Treasure in 1979. Also in 1979, for her complete body of work at that time, the Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People presented Curry with the Distingushed Contribution to the Field of Children’s Literature Award.

Curry resides in Palo Alto, California, and London, England.

Reviews

[Phoebe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review of Over the Sea’s Edge by Jane Louise Curry

In this book in the Abaloc series, Dave with the aid of an ancient medallion changes places in time with Dewi in medieval Wales. Drawing further of the lore that Celtic explorers came to the New World and established civilizations with the resident Native Americans, Curry works her magic drawing together the past and present and how they impact each other.
The concept of time not necessarily being linear is intriguing. Neither Dewi nor Dave are happy in their own times. What happens when they switch places?
This book can be read by itself, but the whole series will be a rich experience for readers.

Geraldine Ann Marshall, author and program specialist at Wickliffe Mounds State Historic Site

[Rosalind Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this, the fourth book in the Abaloc series (though the books are not consecutive time-wise) quite a challenging read. The story meanders, at times a little unclearly, from present-day Ohio through to Medieval Wales (Gwynet) and onwards via an ocean-crossing to the New World, introducing a number of varied native characters along the way. I found I needed to keep hold of everything very tightly and concentrate hard so as not to lose my bearings. On several occasions I had to go back and re-read in order to reinforce the thread of the story as it spun out. In the end though, I would not want this to be taken as a criticism, because the very individual way in which the author unfolds her story only served to enhance, for me, the mysterious and, at times, almost dream-like quality of the fantasy, culminating in yet more marvellous revelations about the magical kingdom of Abaloc. I was richly rewarded for my perseverance and my careful reading; the whole experience was a far cry from reading the often vapid, action-packed fantasy books so common today. Once again, the door into Abaloc opens from inside present time and place as the boy, David Reese, ever day-dreaming about adventures, actually finds himself in one when he slips back accidentally into a different time and is made to change places with another young David (Dewi ap Ithil). There is an interesting and enlightening discussion about the nature of time towards the end of the book. This is a book to fully nurture the imagination; we are not pushed immediately into the action but, like David, we kind of find ourselves slowly falling into it and, once there, are not necessarily always well guided. But, having to make a greater individual effort to carefully find our way brings greater rewards. Jane Louise Curry’s very unique style of storytelling challenges and enlightens those who make it home. As did David in the end. One wonders – might I too perhaps one day be given a way into Abaloc?

[Sue Bridgwater · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the beginning of this story, Dave feels himself a misfit in his life in modern Ohio, unhappily aware of his lack of the academic skills and enthusiasm that his father wants him to have. He feels he is, in a sense, the wrong person, that he cannot please his father by being who he naturally is. He longs for adventure and physical activity:
“I don't want to Structure My Personality Around a Positive Goal. I want to ... to sail down to the Gulf of Mexico on a raft and explore a wilderness and ride with a banner in the wind and...and know how to live on trapping and acorns and nuts and berries or whatever, and ...”
Meanwhile, in the year 1170 the Welsh boy Dewi longs fiercely for the life of a scholar, for all the things Dave rejects. The longing and the discontent together are channelled through the silver pendant from ancient Abaloc that Dave finds in a cave along the Ohio. One night, the boys change places in their sleep, so that each awakes to what he thought he wanted.
The action of the story largely concerns their struggle to accept the selves they find themselves in. Eventually, when each has found peace, each is shown to have done so by integrating into the chosen identity a measure of the self that was formerly rejected. Dave-who-was-Dewi - referred to as Dave from now on - learns at the end to relax some of his obsessive drive for academic success and to enjoy relaxing on the river like Dewi-who-was-Dave (hereafter called Dewi). Dewi finds that his book learning can serve a useful purpose in keeping records of Madauc's community in the New World. At firstthe new Dave tries to limit himself to one aspect of himself, concentrating upon his scholarship to such an extent that, ironically, even his father is alarmed and urges him to ease his pace. Allowing the other aspect of himself back in, Dave finds he can relax and feel safe; imagination is allowed its place alongside Mathematics and Latin: '. . . he never grew so old that he made the mistake of forgetting that dreams hold their share of truth.' The new Dewi, by contrast, tries to get back to his former state and rejects the new:
“I have to get back. He felt the old daydream - the one about an adventurous life where every tomorrow held its own surprise - blow away in a black wind that took his childhood with it. He wanted only to be safe.”
When each boy is reconciled to the existence in himself of elements of the old and the new identity, he finds peace. In one haunting scene Dewi confronts his earlier self walking in the forest in a surreal mist, and each is confirmed by this experience into his sense of belonging in and intending to stay in the new identity; in other words, is confirmed in his sense of self. After this the fleeting contacts between the two are broken off. Neither retains any desire to be other than he is. In exciting scenes of the binding of the serpent Katoa, the theme of choice between good and evil is interwoven with the identity theme; finding a place that feels like home reflects the finding of peace within oneself.
[Condensed from my article THE SENSE OF BELONGING: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NOVELS OF JANE LOUISE CURRY Published in the International Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship, 3, No. 3, Winter 1988, p176ff]