One Shot

By Tanya Landman and Ali Ardington

A powerful and deeply moving coming-of-age drama from Carnegie Medal-winning author Tanya Landman, inspired by the life of infamous sharpshooter Annie Oakley.

Winner of the 2019 Scottish Teenage Book Prize.

After the death of her beloved father, Maggie and her family are thrown into a life of destitution.

With little income and no way to live off their poor land, Maggie tries to provide for her family the way her father always had – with his hunting rifle and whatever animals the forest would provide. But when her mother is confronted with her "unladylike" behaviour, Maggie is thrown into a life of unthinkable cruelty and abuse.

With no one to care for her and only the hope of escape, all Maggie can do is survive.

Particularly suitable for readers aged 13+ with a reading age of 8.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Mar 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781781128886

Tanya Landman

Tanya has been part of Storybox Theatre since 1992 working as a writer, administrator and performer. She is the author of many books for children and is currently based in Devon.

Book preview

1.

By the time I came into this world, bawling and bloody, Ma was tired of raising babies. She’d had three in five years and one of them had died. I was the fourth. Ma’s milk dried up when I was no more than a week old and after that I depended on the cow. Ma took sick and couldn’t even rock me in my crib. So, first thing every morning, Pa filled a bottle, strapped me to his chest with Ma’s shawl and took me along with him. I grew from baby to child out in the woods with Pa, listening to the birdsong and breathing in his smell along with the sweet scent of pine.

Pa was a quiet man. Say quiet to some folks and they think meek. Mild. Timid. Pa was none of those things. He didn’t waste breath on words, but when he did speak, every last syllable was worth hearing. I never once saw him fidget or make a move that wasn’t necessary. But Pa’s stillness was like that of a tiger. There was a powerful strength to it. I don’t mean he was menacing; I mean he was mighty. Nothing seemed to scare him.

One time, when I was maybe four years old, Pa and I were out setting traps in the woods. The wind changed direction and a strong animal stink came drifting towards me. I wasn’t far from Pa, not really. But then I heard the crunching of something heavy walking over dead leaves, and a bear came strolling through the undergrowth. That small distance between my father and me suddenly seemed like a hundred miles.

The bear stopped. Sniffed. Looked right at me. I felt a scream growing in my chest, but Pa breathed out slow, through his teeth. He said, as soft and calm as could be, Come here, Maggie. Nice and slow. And he smiled like there was nothing at all to worry about.

I fixed my eyes on Pa’s and he held me in his gaze. He pulled me in like a fish on a line, until I was by his side. The bear had come closer by then, but Pa wasn’t inclined to rush. Slowly, he loaded his rifle. He poured a charge of powder into the barrel, dropped in a wad of cloth and a bullet and rammed it all down. Pa was talking to the bear the whole time. I’m doing this just in case, he told it. I don’t want to go shooting you if I don’t have to. Pa put a cap into the lock and pulled back the hammer so it was cocked and ready. But he didn’t take aim. Instead, he sat himself down on the ground next to me, leaned against the tree, raised his face to the sun and yawned like he had no troubles in the world. The bear took a long, long look at him, then turned away.

That’s right, Pa said. We ain’t your next meal. And we ain’t gonna hurt you none. You go your sweet way and we’ll go ours.

The bear shuffled off into the trees and I breathed an almighty sigh of relief.

I’m glad you didn’t have to shoot it, I said.

So am I, Pa replied with a laugh. This old rifle will take out a pigeon or a squirrel well enough. I ain’t sure it could bring down a full‑grown bear. Heck, it would be more use as a club! I could have whacked that old bear to death.

2.

My father and I were still crying with laughter by the time we reached home. But before we went into the cabin Pa said, Not a word to your mother. The thought of how she’d react to us meeting a bear wiped the smiles off both our faces.

Ma was the opposite of Pa. True, she was quiet. When we were in town, she didn’t speak unless she was spoken to. She was modest. Ladylike. Yet in her quietness there was a kind of roaring rage.

The wooded rolling hills that surrounded our cabin were a place of wild wonder to me. As close to the Garden of Eden as I could imagine anywhere on earth. But Ma had been born and raised in a city on the east coast. She liked tall buildings, straight roads, stores and hotels and rows of houses with neat yards edged by picket fences. I never could figure out why she’d married Pa and moved into the wilderness. I guess she must have loved him, but sometimes it seemed that any soft feelings had been washed away in a flood of chores. All that was left in her was duty and the desperate desire to be respectable. Ma hated every inch of the county she found herself trapped in. I guess, deep down, she was afraid. At night, she’d flinch if an owl called or a fox barked. And my brother Alexander and my sister Katherine had sucked in her fear with her milk. They didn’t like the big woods any more than she did. They eyed the trees sideways, as if there was something hiding behind them – something with teeth and claws and an empty belly desperate to be filled. Something that would leap out and swallow them whole. Any time they had to pull up a tree seedling from the patch Pa had ploughed, they did it like