In this contemporary fantasy, the grieving biographer of a Victorian
fantasist finds himself slipping inexorably into the supernatural world
that consumed his subject. Failed father, failed husband,
and failed scholar, Charles Hayden hopes to put his life back together
with a new project: a biography of Caedmon Hollow, the long-dead author
of a legendary Victorian children’s book, In the Night Wood, and
forebear of his wife, Erin. Deep in mourning from the loss of their
young daughter, they pack up their American lives, Erin gives up her
legal practice, and the couple settles in Hollow’s remote Yorkshire
mansion. In the neighboring village, Charles meets a
woman he might have loved, a child who could have been his own
daughter, and the ghost of a self he hoped to bury. Erin, paralyzed by
her grief, immerses herself in pills and painting images of a horned
terror in the woods. In the primeval forest
surrounding Caedmon Hollow’s ancestral home, an ancient power is
stirring, a long-forgotten king who haunts the Haydens’ dreams. And
every morning the fringe of darkling trees presses closer. Soon enough, Charles and Erin will venture into the night wood.
Soon enough, they’ll learn that the darkness under the
trees is but a shadow of the darkness that waits inside us all.
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