Readers who have enjoyed The Refuge would be interested in a later novel by Hughes, The Seven Magpies. There are several elements in common between these two novels: an absent father, a mother busy working at a desk, and a fugitive from the authorities who catches a rabbit in a snare, cooks and eats it. In both novels, the viewpoint character has her freedom of movement restricted one afternoon till dark by a man who is confused and angry, but who intends her no harm.

Readers would do well to compare this novel to The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Barrett.

Other contemporary authors whose works may be enjoyed by fans of Monica Hughes are Dave Duncan (especially the three Young Adult novels in his series The King's Daggers), Eileen Kernaghan (Dance of the Snow Dragon and The Snow Queen), and Julie Lawson (Cougar...