The World More Full of Weeping

Eleven-year-old Brian Page spends every waking moment in the forest behind the house where he lives with his father. But forests are always deeper than anyone can know. Secrets are hidden in the eternal twilight of the trees. Those secrets emerge into light when Brian disappears in the forest, as his father did three decades before. His father, however, came home with no memory of the events in the depths of the forest. What has drawn Brian away? Will he emerge, shuddering and broken, as his father did, or will the forests close around him, as they have done so often before?

"Wiersema's haunting novella-whose title aptly references a line in William Butler Yeats' poem 'The Stolen Child'-revolves around an 11-year old boy named Brian whose love of the woods behind his father's house in rural southwestern British Columbia leads him to supernatural discoveries-namely Carly, an ethereal girl. Carly shows the boy a breathtakingly beautiful 'hidden world' in the forest. When Brian disappears one day, his father is forced to revisit obscure memories from his own youth-memories that involve the mysterious forest and a girl named Carly. Powered by a sublime sense of wistfulness and a setting that is simultaneously natural and otherworldly, Wiersema's novella seamlessly blends literary fiction with mythic fantasy to create a lyrical, surreal and deeply melancholic reading experience. The book also includes an essay entitled 'Places and Names,' in which the author explores the signification of 'personal geography' and explains how his fictional town of Henderson (the setting for his story) was created." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)