Principal characters
Estrild, a teenage girl who lived during the Iron Age and who dreams of becoming a warrior
Varick, her friend, a teenage boy who lived during the Iron Age
In The Windeby Puzzle: History and Story, revered children’s writer Lois Lowry demonstrates that she remains an inventive and masterful writer late in her career, creating a unique book that effortlessly combines historical facts, historical fiction, and insight into her own writing process. While in most cases authors choose to clearly delineate one genre for their books, whether fiction, nonfiction, or memoir, Lowry here presents historical facts for background information and then brings those facts to life through fictional imaginings of what people at a particular time period—in this case, the Iron Age—might have experienced and makes those characters come alive. In the historical sections, Lowry also explains how and why stories are written as well as why she made the decisions she did as she put facts together and constructed characters. The result is an engaging book that educates, enchants, and offers insight into Lowry’s writing process.
Lowry’s inspiration for the book was her hope of solving the puzzle of the Windeby Girl. In 1952 in northern Germany on the Windeby Estate, workers uncovered the human remains of someone who was later determined to be a teenage girl, covered for centuries in a peat bog. Lowry explains that the specific organic makeup of peat, a particular kind of highly acidic soil that develops naturally in cold, swampy areas, preserves dead bodies unlike any other material because it keeps intact facial features, hair, and even fingernails. Peat bogs substantially slow down the decomposition of human bodies, and “bog bodies,” as they are sometimes known, have been found before, such as the famous Koelbjerg Woman from approximately 8,000 BCE, among hundreds of others.
The Windeby Girl, however, is unlike most of the previously found bog bodies. For one, she does not appear to have died a violent death, as most of the others had, and for another, she was a young teenager and not an adult. With further examination, the Windeby Girl’s remains were thought to be about two thousand years old, from what is known as the Iron Age (ca. 1200 BCE to 550 BCE), a time when iron tools and weapons were first developed but the Germanic tribes had yet to create written language; consequently, historians know little about the people who lived at this time. Thus, Lowry’s impetus for writing The Windeby Puzzle was to solve a historical mystery of how the teenager might have died, but also to create a character, whom she named Estrild, that children and young teens could relate to, learn from, and understand, built on the available facts and Lowry’s informed imagination.
There are five sections to The Windeby Puzzle. Sections 1, 3, and 5 delve into historical facts and Lowry’s discussion of her writing process. Sections 2 and 4, which are significantly longer, are the fictional chapters that focus on Estrild, the Windeby Girl, and then Varick, Estrild’s friend, and tell their stories vividly and believably.
Before Lowry begins Estrild’s story, she reviews the research in the first historical section and speculates on how the Windeby Girl might have died. These causes included being some kind of ritual sacrifice, being punished for committing adultery, or becoming one of “those who disgrace their bodies [and] are drowned in miry swamps.” All three reasons could explain an apparently nonviolent death, and Lowry also notes the importance of several details in the photograph of the Windeby Girl’s body, which is included in the book. Of special significance is the detail that the Windeby Girl seemed to be blindfolded, as her eyes were covered with a woven ribbon or band, which eventually plays a key role in Estrild’s story. Ultimately, Lowry decides on the third possible reason, of Estrild “disgrac[ing] her body” by trying to become a warrior, something only the males in her village are allowed to do. Lowry concedes later, in the second historical section, that her interpretation of Estrild’s life is unlikely, and it is indeed a modern and feminist one, yet certainly one modern-day young woman and girls could relate to and be inspired by. Though unlikely in historical accuracy, Lowry’s portrait of Estrild and her hopes and dreams of becoming a warrior are rendered realistically and with great heart.
Lowry is especially creative and adept at using known details of the Iron Age to place Estrild as a young woman in her village and describe what her life would have been like at that time, caring for her many younger siblings and helping her mother. There would also be rigid gender roles, with women caring for their homes, children, and domesticated animals, and men and boys plowing in the fields and keeping their home and land safe from intruders. Because of her ambition to become a warrior, Estrild feels like an outsider, and she keeps her ambition from everyone except her friend Varick, who has his own struggles and ambitions. An orphan whose physical disability, a deeply curved spine, limits his ability to walk and work, Varick is nonetheless able to assist the local iron worker to forge swords and shields. He also has an affinity for birds and other animals and has studied their anatomy, and it is through this interest and Varick helping Estrild become a warrior like his father that he and Estrild build a friendship. At one point Varick gives Estrild a bird skeleton that she can hone into a clasp for her woven shawl, and she hopes she will find the time to work on it apart from doing her seemingly endless chores. Lowry found research on another bog person who had a clasp on her shawl made from bird bones, and she incorporated those details, as well as details about forging iron and life in an Iron Age village, into Estrild’s story to create a colorful, historically accurate, and riveting tale.
After Estrild’s story concludes, Lowry moves into the next historical section, where she discusses a dramatic revelation. New research by archeologist Dr. Heather Gill-Robinson determined that the Windeby Girl is really the sixteen-year-old Windeby Boy. Lowry astutely made this new information a part of her book. New technologies in DNA analysis and 3-D imaging had been developed since the Windeby bog body was discovered, and research conclusions were re-examined and updated. Rather than ignoring the new research and abandoning Estrild’s story, Lowry wrote a second story on the Windeby Boy, elevating Varick from friend of Estrild to the protagonist in his own story. Lowry explained that the new research indicated the boy was ill, malnourished, and most likely died of natural causes. The “blindfold” over his eyes was not a blindfold but was most likely a headband that had fallen down to his eyes over time or while those 1952 workers on the Windeby Estate excavated his body. Lowry imagines, in Varick, a young man who is sickly and underfed and has few prospects because of his disability, but also someone who has a keen and questioning mind, especially in relation to animals and anatomy. His disability is evident, and he is ostracized because of it, but he finds some peace through his own proto-scientific research on animals and bones and his time in the forest. Lowry writes an equally vivid and poignant story for Varick, despite his short life.
Critics have overwhelmingly praised The Windeby Puzzle. Tracy Cronce, in a starred review for School Library Journal, called the book “expertly written and beautifully engaging.” Cronce went on to conclude, “Readers will be transfixed with actual photographs and more than one explanation of this grim mystery.” The photographs of the Windeby Girl and included illustrations, particularly of owls, contribute significantly to the reader’s enjoyment of the book and their understanding of the science of bog people. Additionally, Marissa Moss, in the New York Journal of Books, deemed The Windeby Puzzle “ingenious” and stated that “we all have stories to tell, and Lowry provides a shining example of what a gift these stories can be.” Reviewers especially admired how Lowry wove the three elements of historical facts, fiction, and discussion of her writing process together in a comprehensive yet effortless way. They also appreciated Lowry’s discussion of her writing process and believed young readers would be equally fascinated. New York Times reviewer Laura Amy Schlitz summed up this perspective well, stating, “The Windeby Puzzle is structurally strange and beautifully crafted, zigzagging, as its subtitle announces, between history and story.”
Surprisingly, most critics, with the exception of Schlitz, praised Estrild’s story but neglected Varick’s story and sometimes did not mention it at all. Possibly the feminist angle of Estrild wanting to be a warrior like her brothers and deceased uncle resonated more with reviewers than Varick’s quieter, more introspective story, but Lowry tells both stories, while very different, with equal skill, weight, and tenderness. Varick’s story is just as poignant as Estrild’s story.
In telling Estrild’s and Varick’s stories, Lowry notably chooses to focus on their lives and not the imagined details of their deaths, believing that people live on after death when someone remembers them and writes their story. Estrild’s and Varick’s stories, and their history in the Iron Age, are memorable, and they live because Lois Lowry has told their story.