Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0440205433, Mass Market Paperback)

Volume I of the series Tales of Gom in the Legends of Ulm. Nominated for the oldest children's literature award in the U.S., the Northwest Pacific Young People's Choice Award, it begins a 9-book saga of Gom's quest which begins as an effort to find his mother and escalates into a struggle to save his very world from extinction. Gom is an oddball, possessing qualities he didn't inherit from his simple, woodcutter father. He can speak with creatures, he is given to having strange "waking dreams" which warn him of danger. And he wears a mysterious stone, a rune, which in times of crisis comes alive, even hums against his chest. Torn between the desire to please his father and stay on Windy Mountain and the need to go find his mother, Gom in the end is forced to make tough choices.