Vince Elgin is an orphan, having lost his mother and his father in a fire when he was young, but beyond that, his life hasn't been much of a fairy tale. With only a senile grandfather he barely knows to call family, Vince was interned in a group home, where he spun fantastical stories and dreamed that his father, whose body was never found, might one day return for him. But it's been a long time since the fire, a long time since Vince has told himself a story worth believing in.

That's when a letter arrives, telling Vince his grandfather has passed away. Vince cannot explain it, but he's convinced that if his father is somehow still alive, he'll find him at the funeral. He strikes out for the small town of Dyerville carrying only one thing with him: his grandfather's journal. The journal tells a tale that could not possibly be true: the story of his grandfather's young life with witches, giants, magical books, and evil spirits. But as Vince reads on and gets closer to Dyerville, fact and fiction begin to intertwine, and Vince finds that his very real adventure may have more in common with his grandfather's than he ever could have known.

M. P. Kozlowsky, author of Juniper Berry, has crafted a powerfully imaginative novel of the spaces in life where fantasy and reality intersect, and a touching story of the things we give up to recover the things we've lost.