The Quiet Wing

A Novel of Childhood, Resilience, and the Hidden Cost of Survival

For readers who loved The Nightingale, Orphan #8, and All the Light We Cannot See comes an unforgettable novel of one boy's silent resistance against a system designed to erase him.

England, 1930s. Some children are born into families. Elias is delivered to an institution.

At just six years old, Elias arrives at the Sanctuary—a preventorium for children deemed too frail, too sickly, too much of a burden for their families to bear. His parents' hands slip away. The car door closes. And with it, his childhood ends.

In the Sanctuary's echoing halls, children are measured by bells and bathed in antiseptic. Emotions are suppressed. Questions go unanswered. Comfort is rationed like medicine. Here, in this temple of regulated breathing and enforced silence, Elias learns the most essential skill of all: how to disappear while still remaining visible.

But disappearing is not the same as being erased.

Through thirteen years of institutional life, Elias masters the art of observation. He watches. He waits. He survives. While other children rage or weep or break, Elias becomes a student of silence—reading the subtle hierarchies of the dormitories, decoding the nurses' moods, finding small acts of defiance in perfect obedience. In Clara, a girl as fragile as she is fierce, he discovers that even in a place designed to isolate, connection is possible. Even if it must remain unspoken.

But survival is not the same as living. And when Elias is finally released into a world that continued without him, he faces a more terrifying challenge than anything the Sanctuary imposed: learning to be a person, not just a patient. To speak, not just observe. To choose, not just comply.

From the cold discipline of institutional childhood to the overwhelming chaos of post-war England, from silent dormitories to the book-lined sanctuary of a small shop where stories offer what life denied, Elias must discover whether a boy raised in silence can ever truly find his voice.

✨ What readers are saying:

"Devastating and beautiful in equal measure. I couldn't put it down."

"Ferrier has created something extraordinary—a novel that breaks your heart while showing you the unbreakable resilience of the human spirit."

"For anyone who has ever felt invisible, this book is a revelation."

THE QUIET WING is a masterwork of literary historical fiction—a searing exploration of institutional trauma, the price of survival, and the revolutionary act of becoming yourself when the world has taught you to disappear.

Perfect for readers who appreciate:

• Deeply researched historical settings
• Psychologically complex protagonists
• Stories of resilience without sentimentality
• Institutional narratives (preventoriums, orphanages, sanatoriums)
• Literary fiction with commercial appeal
• Quiet, observational storytelling that builds to emotional crescendos

Inspired by the real preventoriums that housed thousands of children across England and America from 1909-1970—institutions now largely forgotten, but whose impact on the children who lived there can never be erased.