In Incident at Hawk's Hill, Eckert takes a true story and expands it into a novel.

He keeps the cast to a minimum, and the animals, particularly the badger, are as important to the story as most of the people.

Benjamin MacDonald is a six-year-old who looks closer to three or four. Short and thin, he is abnormally shy for his age. He probably suffers from a mild case of autism—a mental illness that causes its victims to withdraw from others—for he almost never communicates with anyone except his mother, and seldom with her. He appears to talk to the animals on the farm and in the wild, but he actually only imitates what they do and watches their responses. All of this makes him a much misunderstood boy.

Ben's father, William, is at the center of the misunderstanding. He wants to...