Betony Alison Craig, an orphan living at the Brackenbury Children's Home in Suffolk, keeps her loneliness in check and the world at bay by withdrawing further and further into a world of fantasy and dreams in this later Ruth M. Arthur title. Betony's feelings of recognition when she first sees the Wasteland - a desolate territory by the salt marshes - her sense of connection to the land and its history, create a place of refuge to which she withdraws at every opportunity. As Betony begins to witness ghostly echoes of the past, first seeing a Viking long-ship, then hearing the actual voices of those long-ago invaders, she becomes more and more enmeshed in the past...

In On the Wasteland, Arthur delivers an interesting variation on her usual theme of a heroine whose entanglement with the past allows her to grapple with her present-day problems, in that she seems to be putting forward the idea that too deep a connection to the past can be more dangerous than helpful. The story has a neat symmetry to it, with the echoes of the past saving Betony from her early isolation and her growing friendships saving her from the past. ( )

I would have been so happy to read this book back when I was a teen whose reading was restricted to what she could find at the public library and the crappy chain bookstore at the mall. I read "A Candle in Her Room" and "Requiem for a Princess" over and over and over, over the years...

The one other review here on LT about this book hit it dead on: this is all about the haunting atmosphere.... and for me, the evocative line drawings by Margery Gill. The story holds up well enough that I will make time to savor this one.