Prudence, When You Were Young

In the F-post about Forever Young I introduced the Children of Eternity series about a girl named Samantha who washes up on an island called Eternity with no memory of who she is.  Samantha soon makes friends with Prudence Gooddell, who is as much of an outcast as she is.

Prudence is shy and sweet but also very fat, which is what makes her an outcast from the rest of the children on the island.  For as much as they make fun of her, the children still need Prudence around, because she's the only seamstress on Eternity.  And when you don't have access to Wal-Mart or Amazon, you need a seamstress to make or mend your clothes.  Thus while she might not be popular, Prudence is essential to the island's functioning.

In the final book of the series, When You Were Young, we delve into Prudence's past.  There's a reason she got so fat, which involves something terrible happening to her when she was little.  It also contributed to her shyness.  We see the contrast early in the book when Prudence is doused with water from the Fountain of Youth and becomes a scrawny little chatterbox, which is how she was until the incident took place.

Before that happens, Prudence has been developing a relationship with a boy on the island named Wendell.  He's another outcast in that he's really short and wimpy, but also super-smart.  They've been taking things really slow because despite everything that's happened to her thanks to the evil Reverend Crane, Prudence is still a devout Christian.  She would never dream of having sex before she's married.

In their personalities there's a night-and-day difference between Prudence and Samantha, but their shared experiences have made them best friends.  At the end of the book we see how this friendship will carry forward into the next generation.  (Spoiler alert:  they don't die.  Duh.)

You might consider Prudence as a prototype for both Emma Earl and Becky Beech in the Scarlet Knight books, as she's fat like Becky but her personality is more like Emma's.  Plus she's a seamstress like Mrs. Chiostro.  There's recycling at its finest.

This and the rest of my books are available at the new Planet 99 Publishing site!