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The House of Dies Drear |
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"The house held secrets, Thomas knew, even before he first saw it
looking gray and massive on its ledge of rock. It has a century-old
legend -- two fugitive slaves had been killed by bounty hunters
after leaving its passageways, and Dies Drear himself, the
abolitionist who had made the house into a station on the
Underground Railroad, had been murdered there, The ghosts of the
tree were said to walk its rooms... "Yes, the house held secrets... did it hold danger as well? Thomas was sure it did, but his obsession that the house give up its secrets led him in, t through the terror of entrapment in its labyrinth of tunnels and to an awesome confrontation with Pluto, the mysterious and formidable "devil" who jealously guarded the house. "Then suddenly, it was alarming there was danger and the Smalls were being warned to flee. But what kind of danger, and why, and what did it have to do with running slaves and the ordeals of a hundred years ago? Thomas searches, and in searching finds not only the answer to these secrets from the past, but a deeper sense of his own connection to that past." — from inside cover, 1968 printing |