Knowing that Beagle was a child when he wrote this book, I thought as I read, ‘How could anyone of only 19 have all this elegiac wisdom reserved for those of us grown old and weary?’ I had hoped, in the least, it would be a cute story. What I found instead blew me away!

The words, like a stream of clear water sinuously passing through a shadow without reverberation tells a story about a reclusive Jonathan Rebeck who lives in an abandoned mausoleum by choice; a raven who talks and scavenges food for him outside the gates of the cemetery; Laura Durant and Michael Morgan who are buried there; and Gertrude Klapper, a widow who one day, while visiting her dead husband, meets Mr. Rebeck by sheer happenstance.

These four form an unlikely alliance that the reader will not soon forget.

A Fantasy tale worth savoring. FIVE STARS