Life Song: An Irish Odyssey opens in Wessex in 979 A.D. In 10th-century Britain, a band of Viking soldiers from the Dublin area is assigned to raid at random along the Wessex coast. Their purpose is to disturb the efforts of the English monarch, King Aethelred, who is attempting to unite the nobility more fully under their feudal government, and hinder the Danish incursion into Britain. Owyn is the nine-year-old son of a blacksmith living with his family outside the local nobleman's castle. The band of Viking raiders encounters only a small band of peasants in an isolated enclave. They kill...