The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue (2006)

William Butler Yeats wrote: "Come away O human child!/To the waters and the wild/With a faery, hand in hand,/For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand." He pictured a child saved from the sorrows of life by beneficent fey creatures. His poem, "The Stolen Child," inspired the writer Keith Donohue to write this tale of the lives of both the child who enters the wood to become one of the fairies and of the creature who assumes the likeness of the child and takes his place in the world of humanity. As it turns out, neither one escapes sorrows.

Donogue tells his twin stories in alternating chapters. We discover that fairies (they prefer the term "hobgoblins") live a hardscrabble life, hiding in the dwindling woodlands, scavenging for food and stealing from humans to supply their needs. They don't die, unless they are killed, but they don't age either, and so are perpetually trapped in children's bodies. Christened Aniday by his captors, the newest fairy recruit can't stop longing for his former life.

Meanwhile, the fairy who has become the boy Henry Day lives in fear that he will be found out as a changeling. His father, at least, instinctively feels that something is amiss. As Henry grows to adulthood, falls in love, and is married, he continues to be tormented by his feeling of inauthenticity.

Donohue has written an engaging and very readable story, but he has aimed at something more. This is also an allegory about accepting ourselves as we are. Henry Day's mother gives us a clue when she says, "You are who you are, for good or ill...." Interestingly, both protagonists help themselves achieve wholeness through the arts, Aniday through writing his life story and Henry Day through composing a symphony, which he titles "The Stolen Child."

This is not a novel destined to become a classic, but it is an enjoyable read.