The story begins just after the narrator, a middle-aged man,
delivers the eulogy at a funeral. He drives away, going to his sister’s home,
and decides he has time to visit his childhood home. Once in the neighborhood,
he goes past his old home, long torn down, to the end of the lane. He stops to visit the Hempstock Farm, goes
around back to the pond, sits down, and gets lost in a reverie about the summer
he turned seven.
The pond was an ocean which the Hempstock women (Lettie, her
mother and grandmother) crossed to inhabit the farm. Lettie takes the boy with
her on an adventure that turns into a scary, scary race to the death. There are
monsters, and creatures, and hunger birds, all intent on destroying the boy,
whom Lettie must save.
This is a book for adults, but children and youth will
delight in this fantasy tale of lightness and dark, good and evil.
259 pages
