Troy is the child of divorced parents, living with his mother - but caught in the war between his parents for custody. His father arranges for them to run away. The car crashes and his father is killed. Troy, surviving, cannot - will not - believe it, blames both himself and his mother, and will have nothing to do with her. Recuperating with family friends who run a small village shop, he experiences hallucinatory images of himself in the Beowulf legend, a story he shared with his father. As Troy's modern-day story - his loss of memory, his estrangement and fear of his own mother - interweaves with the vanquishing of the hell-hag and later the dragon by himself and Beowulf, standing shoulder to shoulder, Troy finally becomes reconciled to the death of his father.

 

There are 224 pages in this book. This book was published 2002 by Hachette Children's Group .

Maggie Pearson's first novel, Owl Light, was shortlisted for the WH Smith Mind-boggling Book Award, and Shadow of the Beast was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal.