#Review: Incident at Hawk's Hill

Title: Incident at Hawk’s Hill

Author: Allan W Eckert

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 1995

Allan W Eckert plunges readers into times gone by in the Canadian prairie with this story about a young boy, Ben MacDonald, whose uncanny ability to empathise with animals results in him forming a strong bond with a female badger. Smaller than most children his age, Ben also has issues communicating with other people. The fact that his parents live on an isolated farm doesn’t help either, and the child spends many hours on his own, following animals around and mimicking them—often with uncanny precision.

William MacDonald doesn’t understand his son, and this leads to most of the tension in the family. Considering the time period in which the novel is set, these concerns of William are quite valid in a society where being “different” can cause problems. In addition, the MacDonald family have a new neighbour, George Burton, a ne’er-do-well trapper who’s decided to try out farming instead. Ben and Burton are guaranteed to come into conflict.

And problems soon arise when Burton gains permission to set traps on the MacDonald farm. At this time, Ben has his first encounter with a large badger sow, but it is her mate who is caught and killed by Burton, who then sets another trap when he realises there is another badger in the vicinity.

On one level this is a story about a boy who survives in the wild for two months thanks to his unique bond with a badger. On another, it is also an examination of empathy. It’s Ben’s sensitivity which ironically creates barriers between him and his family, and it’s only once his family look beyond their comfort zones that they begin to understand their troubled brother and son.

Burton remains the outsider. I did feel that Eckert’s treatment of his personality to be a bit stereotypical: the dirty, callous brute who traps and kills beautiful wild animals in a most cruel fashion. While it is true that nature is red in tooth and claw, I felt just ever so slightly manipulated into hating Burton, as though the author had an agenda. And, while I don’t agree with trapping animals for their fur, I nonetheless didn’t really like having the author play to emotions to that degree.

Nevertheless, there’s a reason why Eckert is considered a master storyteller. He is a keen observer of man and nature, and his gift for narrative description is second to none. If you’re looking for a book to gift a young reader (or a reader who’s young at heart) who’s interested in the natural world, Incident at Hawk’s Hill will be spellbinding.

My mom’s one of the people I blame for my love of books and writing. She was a school teacher, and some of my earliest memories are of sitting in her classes during the afternoons when I was done with preschool. My favourite class was English, and I’d listen to her teach while I drew on bits of paper. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but often when my mom asked the kids a question I was the only one to put up my hand with a correct answer. I was five at the time. She was teaching Grade 6s.

So, yeah, it would appear that my knack with language is largely thanks to my mom, and we still spend hours chatting about the written word. She’s also the only member of my family with whom I can discuss my writing. Apart from my dad, who also used to be a school teacher, the rest are pretty much functionally illiterate.

When I was little, my parents would often take me on long hikes in the mountains, and one of the ways in which my mom distracted me from the distance or my sore feet was to tell me stories. One such story was about a young boy, about my own age then (six), who got lost in the woods and was looked after by a badger. She remembers wishing she could find that book again but had, sadly, forgotten the title and the author’s name. One of the children at the school where she was teaching loved that story so much he stole the book before she could finish reading it to the class.

My mom and I had also gone to the library in a bid to find the story, and asked the librarian if she could help. She had no idea what the book’s title was and that’s where the matter rested for almost twenty years. Today I received a phonecall from my mom and we spoke about that book. I was at my desk so I suggested we run a few searches online.

My mom gave me what she thought was the author’s surname, and I had some fun with Google and Amazon. Nothing came up. Then I typed in “badgers in fiction”. Lo and behold, www.whatsthatbook.com came up as one of the search results. It’s an online community dedicated to helping people find their long-lost books and the Google search had dug up, “children’s/young adult novel about a young boy who falls into a badger hole, is injured and subsequently cared for by the mother badger inhabiting the hole.”

When I read that blurb out to my mom she yelled with joy. We’d found our book: Incident at Hawk’s Hill by Allan W Eckert. Because I love supporting independent bookshops, I mailed the Book Lounge right away and they’ve put it on order. It’ll be here in two weeks.

This is one of those niggling little life stories that has a happy ending. My mother had remembered the book with such fondness and it really made my day to help her rediscover it. I can’t wait to read the whole story myself. I’d love to know what some of your book mysteries are.