Wendy Orr’s Swallow’s Dance is one of a trio of novels set in the Mediterranean world of the Bronze Age; it tells the story of the impact of the cataclysmic eruption of the volcanic island Thera (around 1600 BCE) on the lives of survivors. The title refers to the dance performed by girls of the Swallow Clan of Thera as they sing to the mother goddess; the central character of the novel, Leira, is one of these girls, and she tells the story in prose interspersed with free verse.  

An earthquake forces Leira and her family to take refuge on Crete. There she struggles to help reestablish the family fortunes and to support her injured mother and her old nurse (who was sold to the family as a child). But when the volcanic eruption and the tsunami that follows bring social collapse and starvation, Leira finds herself without resources and without useful skills. She is also distrusted both as a member of the priestly class (resented for their failure to ward off disaster) and as a refugee from the ill-omened island whose eruption has ruined Crete.

In what follows, we learn how Leira manages to survive and to find a more hopeful future; the narrative repeatedly drives home the ways in which Leira’s changed circumstances have changed her outlook, so that she becomes aware of her previous privilege, of what she owes to helpers she would once have looked down on, and of the injustice of slavery. 

Like other authors of fictions set in the Bronze Age, Orr draws on archaeological evidence in imagining Cretan society; but she attributes to her central character a developing concern with social justice that reflects the progressive views of her own day. – Deborah Roberts