Seventh Son (novel)
The first book in Orson Scott Card's series The Tales of Alvin Maker, Seventh Son (1987) is about Alvin Miller, his father's seventh son. For a fuller explanation of the world of Seventh Son, see The Tales of Alvin Maker.
Since his father was his grandfather's own seventh son, and seventh sons are known to have extraordinary "knacks" (specific magical abilities), young Alvin is extremely powerful. His abilities make him the target of the Unmaker, who recognizes Alvin's powers as those of a Maker — a wizard of sorts. The Unmaker works largely through water, trying to kill Alvin in his early years.
The Unmaker acts through the Hatrack River to try to kill Alvin while he's still in the womb, but he is saved by his brother Vigor. Vigor is mortally wounded in the act. He clings to life while help arrives, then dies after Alvin is born. The help was dispatched at the insistence of five-year-old "torch" (mind-reader and fortune-teller) Peggy Guester, who saw Alvin and Alvin's possible future as a Maker with her ability to see even unborn children.
Years later, a ten-year-old Alvin is still avoiding trouble at the hands of the Unmaker when "Taleswapper" (William Blake) the storyteller arrives in the town his parents founded. Meanwhile, the Reverend Philadelphia Thrower is becoming a tool of the Unmaker. When the Unmaker manages to injure Alvin, Taleswapper encourages him to heal himself, and Thrower (acting as a surgeon) attempts to kill the boy but he finds himself unable to by a mysterious force. Alvin heals himself (with the aid of brother Measure) and is contracted as an apprentice to a smith in the town on the Hatrack River where he was born, but Peggy knows it will be more than a year before he will return to his birthplace.
The book's sequel, second in the tales of Alvin's life, is Red Prophet.