“The Tree of Tales,” says de Lint’s Conjure Man, “is an act of magic, an act of faith. Its existence becomes an affirmation of the power that the human spirit can have over its own destiny. The stories are just stories—they entertain, they make one laugh or cry—but if they have any worth they carry with them a deeper resonance that remains long after the final page is turned ....”

The interconnected stories of the Newford cycle are a particularly lovely new limb on that ancient tree, and one that shall grow and flower beyond the pages of this single book as de Lint continues to explore Newford’s myriad streets.

In his own city of Ottawa, in Canada, Charles de Lint is a novelist, a poet, a fiddler, a fluteplayer, a painter, a critic and folklore scholar; but most of all he is a magician: the kind who makes magic with his multidisciplined creativity, with the tools of myth, folklore and fantasy. “I think those of us who write fantasy,” said fellow author Susan Cooper in her Newbery Award acceptance speech, “are dedicated to making impossible things seem likely, making dreams seem real. We are somewhere between the Abstract and Impressionist painters. Our writing is haunted by those parts of our experience which we do not understand, or even consciously remember. And if you, child or adult, are drawn to our work, your response comes from that same shadowy land .... I have been attempting definitions, but I am never really comfortable when writing about ‘fantasy.’ The label is so limiting. It seems to me that every work of art is a fantasy, every book or play, painting or piece of music, everything that is made, by craft and talent, out of somebody’s imagination. We have all dreamed, and recorded our dreams as best we could.”

In these pages, de Lint has recorded dreams: Jilly Coppercorn’s and Geordie’s, Sophie’s and Christy’s, Tallulah’s and the dreams of Newford itself. There are dreams underfoot here, some fragile as spiders’ webs, others solid as asphalt and brickcobbled streets. As you walk into the heart of the city of Newford, remember: tread warily. Tread softly.