Once Rudyard Riding Wenceslas saw to his lands, his children and the people under his rule with great and loving care. But now the melancholy Eighth duke of West Redding does nothing but pine for his dear, deceased wife Elva. And he prepares for the approaching day when a miraculous, hand-crafted flying machine will carry him deep into the heart of the weald - a mysterious and impenetrable wood with but a single edge and one entrance - where he believes his lost beloved waits.

So, begins . . . or, rather, continues . . . the tale of good Wenceslas, his heirs and his ancestors - a great disaster of a family fated to eternally repeat the fatal mistakes of preceding generations. For even as the Duke plunges from the sky into the dark, foreboding forest, Destiny;s wheel is taking a tragic, inevitable turn. And with a new bride-to-be and her many-times dead troll-hag mother in tow, Wenceslas will return to a world devastatingly altered - carrying a dread curse into his household that will propel his young daughter toward her preordained future in a mirror-land on the far side of the weald.

What follows is an adventure strange, sensuous and fantastic - a story of magic, dreams and folly, of binding, unspoken promises and obligations of blood, if not love. It is a distinctly adult fable of bother timeless and true . . . and as biting as a frigid weald wind that childs the dead and teh living as well.

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