Time-slip stories are a familiar trope in all sorts of literature: in books for younger readers, the slippage is usually into the past rather than (as in Wells’ The Time Machine) into the future. In this, The Wild Way Home slips further than usual, landing Charlie Merriam back into the Stone Age. Charlie’s playground is Mandel Forest, with landmarks not just of place but of imagination – Deadman’s Cave, the Spirit Stone – and a river. When Charlie’s brother is born with a ‘tiny, not-right heart’, Charlie runs away to the sanctuary of Mendel Forest, and there encounters an injured ‘wild boy’, Hartboy (both children mishear the other’s name, and are called Cholliemurrum and Harby for most of the story). Hartboy, in circumstances that are not explained, can find neither of his parents, and is desperate to find and protect his baby sister.

Hartboy introduces the recurring theme of ‘make safe’, and the two children essentially take care of each other, Charlie helping Hartboy until he recovers from his concussion, Hartboy helping Charlie escape from wolves. The adventures that surround their attempts to find what is left of Hartboy’s family, and to get Charlie home, are straightforward and engaging, and both are negotiating a level of guilt: Hartboy because he ‘failed’ to take care of his baby sister, Charlie for running away from the shock of a shattered imaginary ideal, and thereby abandoning the much-anticipated sibling.

A recurring sensibility, if not theme, is the way that the time-slip is represented by different experiences of nature, rather than purely differences between the humans. Charlie’s previous encounters with the natural world have all been positive, and reassuring, where thunderstorms are exciting, animals are pets, hunting is a game. Overwhelmed by the shattering of a confident expectation of life with a new sibling, Charlie tried to reject circumstances by running away. But in the Stone Age, the forest is a wild place, neither playground nor refuge, and the only thing that counts is being able to survive, and help your own to survive. No plan or idea or person, however important or cherished, is immune to the random and impersonal chances of nature.

For what is primarily a well-paced adventure story, The Wild Way Home is reflective, and this, along with the presentation of the natural world as a place with its own rich meaning, makes for a very rewarding read. The balancing influence of a wild place is reminiscent of David Almond’s Kit’s Wilderness and Skellig, and the connection with the Stone Age will recall also Stig of the Dump. ( )