Otto of the Silver Hand
1888
Born in blood and violence, young Otto enters a medieval Germany where robber barons rule through steel and terror. His father, the fierce Baron Conrad, has brought tragedy to Otto's mother, and the boy is sent to the monastery of St. Michaelsburg to be raised by the gentle Brother John, far from the castle of Drachenhausen and its brutal ways. But the world cannot be kept out. When Otto is called back to his father's domain, he finds himself caught between the peace he has known and the blood feud that has defined his family for generations. The rival house of Trutz-Drachen threatens everything, and Otto must discover what kind of man he will become when the swords are drawn around him. Howard Pyle tells this tale with the cadence of an old legend, his prose as sturdy and satisfying as a castle wall. The violence is real but never gratuitous; the tenderness between Otto and his caretaker never feels false. This is a story about how a child of darkness might choose light, and it has been stirring young readers since 1888.
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“It may be," said he, "that the wisdom of little children flies higher than our heavy wits can follow.””
— Howard Pyle
“This tale that I am about to tell is of a little boy who lived and suffered in those dark middle ages; of how he saw both the good and the bad of men, and of how, by gentleness and love and not by strife and hatred, he came at last to stand above other men and to be looked up to by all.””
— Howard Pyle
