In Sister Light, Sister Dark, the focal character is Jenna, traced from her birth through her early teens. Her special status as a prophesied savior is reflected in the images and various names attached to her: Jo-an-nna, Annuenna, the white babe, White Goddess, and more. "And so Great Alta made the Anna, the White One, the Holy One." The charm of Jenna's story is the play between the ordinary in life and the extraordinary, the tug between a gifted girl wanting to belong and an impressionable folk isolating the heroine of its myth. "I am not the White Babe," Jenna insists for years. "I am just a girl."

But Jenna is a girl blessed from babyhood with exceptional human qualities. She is tall, superior at games and lessons, quick of hand, excellent with the bow, throwing knife, and sword.

She is inquisitive, assertive, strong, and rather rebellious against...