Dragonsong

Dragonsong is a science fantasy novel by the American-Irish writer Anne McCaffrey, published by Atheneum in March 1976 and the first book of the Harper Hall of Pern trilogy.

Menolly has grown up in an isolated sea hold where music is not a trade and a daughter with a gift for it is not encouraged. Her parents see no future in it for her, and when her father refuses her what she regards as her calling she runs away from home. She is on her own when Thread starts falling again: a rain of organisms that eats anything organic it touches, arriving from the sky as it does every few generations on Pern. She takes shelter in a cave by the sea and makes a discovery there that changes what she can do and who she can become.

The novel is set during the same period as the earlier Pern books.