The quiet magic of 'Charlotte's Web' collides with the raw survival of 'Winter's Bone' in this YA novel of magical realism set one December in rural Alabama.
December, Rural Alabama.
Every Christmas Eve, twelve-year-old Mags sneaks into her grandaddy's stable and sleeps among the horses, hoping ? just once ? to hear them talk. This year, instead, she stumbles onto something far more dangerous: a wounded white stag hidden in the woods.
The forest isn't normal. Animals talk back. Witches lurk under curtains of kudzu. There's a secret cave no one's supposed to find, a single golden bullet that changes everything and an island you can only reach through a portal. Closing in on all of it is a relentless deer hunter: Tasty Murder.
As the days blur toward New Year's, Mags is pulled into a fast, strange and risky chase through the woods, where magic and real danger exist side by side. Led to a midnight showdown on three-wheel ATVs, her survival depends on quick thinking, nerve and knowing who ? or what ? to trust.
Autorentext
Alex Dawson is a creative writing professor at Rutgers University, where he teaches courses steeped in folklore and leads fable-fueled Study Abroad programs to some of the planet's most mystical places, including Ireland. He is the writer/director/star of The Devil & Daisy Dirt, a folk horror fairy tale with live bluegrass music and an eight-foot puppet, and Room to Swing an Ax, a Southern Gothic song cycle and memoiristic monodrama about growing up on a haunted horse farm in rural Alabama. Before becoming a professor, Dawson worked variously as a carpenter, carriage driver, bouncer, and bartender; he owned a bookstore for almost ten years. Welcome to White Hart is his first novel.