A place where stories are forbidden, where all of life is dedicated to practical tasks, and where children are punished for speaking of their dreams – such is the world created by Monica Hughes in The Story Box. The islanders of Ariban work at their traditional crafts of fishing and weaving in a pre-industrial society marked by their dread of contact with foreigners, and their strange refusal to permit any mention of dreams, stories, or other products of the imagination. Into this stern world comes a shipwrecked stranger, the beautiful Jennifer, who clutches a chest of books and tells the horrified islanders that she is a storyteller. She is discovered, half-drowned, by young Colin, and his decision to save her rather than let the sea take her away is only the first in a series of increasingly agonized choices he must make. Family loyalties and love of his home conflict with a growing interest in the larger world and curiosity and admiration for the wise, resourceful Jennifer. Can Jennifer’s stories help him to understand himself and choose the right path?

A masterly storyteller herself, Hughes grabs the reader’s attention from the opening lines of the novel and holds it until its dramatic open-ended conclusion. The conflict between a virtuous puritanical community and the artistic and imaginative expression that it considers threatening is a recurring theme in literature, from Swift’s horses in Gulliver’s Travels who cannot conceive of speaking “the thing which is not,” to the isolated fishing community that tries to stifle musical creativity in Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonsong. Hughes’ focus on brave but troubled Colin, rather than the almost too self-assured Jennifer makes the conflict real and understandable. Ultimately, The Story Box is a celebration of the liberating power of fiction.