Cry of a Seagull

The Messenger

by Monica Dickens

Since the beginning of time, Favour, the mystical horse, had been coming to earth to rescue the victims of evil and injustice, using living people as messengers to carry out his work. People like Rose, at this special age when anything is possible. With the horse, she can transcend time and space to travel to other scenes in the past, present and future that were as real as her everyday life.Rose is not having an easy summer. Her grandfather is ill, and her mother has been called away to look after him, leaving thirteen-year-old Rose and her clueless father to manage without her. This means taking control of the hotel her mother runs by the sea in the full clamour of tourist season--Rose has her work cut out for her. All this work gets in the way of riding with her friend Abigail, and sailing with Ben, an older boy that comes to stay at the hotel every summer with his father.But her earthly woes are overshadowed by her duties as a magical messenger. She is transported through time by Favour, witnessing important clues that all lead up to an injustice that Rose must prevent. To make matters worse, the evil Lord of the Moor is trying to stop her with his ghostly army.Cry of a Seagull is the last part of The Messenger fantasy series written by Monica Dickens.

Genres: Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

From the publisher: MONICA DICKENS, born in 1915, was brought up in London and was the great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens. Her mother's German origins and her Catholicism gave her the detached eye of an outsider; at St Paul's Girls' School she was under occupied and rebellious. After drama school she was a debutante before working as a cook. One Pair of Hands (1939), her first book, described life in the kitchens of Kensington. It was the first of a group of semi autobiographies of which Mariana (1940), technically a novel, was one. 'My aim is to entertain rather than instruct,' she wrote. 'I want readers to recognise life in my books.' In 1951 Monica Dickens married a US naval officer, Roy Stratton, moved to America and adopted two daughters. An extremely popular writer, she involved herself in, and wrote about, good causes such as the Samaritans. After her husband died she lived in a cottage in rural Berkshire, dying there in 1992.
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Reviews

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything is better with a donkey involved.

[Tony Peck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well I really wanted this story to end, but was enough engaged to want to know how the story was going to progress and resolve. The writing is quite nice with detail of running a boarding house in a seaside town in England quite engaging.
I was pleased to have read it - I had not realised her relationship to Dickens (great grandfather) and the imaginative story has lots of redeeming features despite my desire to finish it.