Jody

About the Book

When we first meet Jody, we learn he is a boy of twelve, living in central Ohio in the 1890s. The son of farmerfolk Judd and Edna Marsh, Jody is a solitary soul, owing primarily to the fact that he quit growing at eight years of age. This results in a steady diet of ridicule, first from his family and relatives, and then from those his own age ("for that is the ignoble way of youth"). So he chooses isolation from his kind, and gambols in an eternal summer ("for that is always summer's false promise").

On one of those summer days, he stays out too late and becomes lost, winding up at the shack of an old black man named Zeke Samuels. Zeke fills Jody's head with a halloween-like tale of Midsummer's Eve (which this is), and of demons and Evil. Jody becomes so frightened from the good-natured telling that he runs blindly into a cornfield, and knocks himself out. When he awakens there are no "demons," but he is met by Albee Callan, who wonders if he is one ("the devil's children"). Jody insists that he isn't, and Albee volunteers to see him home — only to find that it's gone!

Albee takes Jody to his clan, in Rivermark, introduces him to his wife, Mindy (who instantly takes a liking to Jody and makes him wonder, for not the last time, if he really wants to go home). They tell him that the Hazen — the clan's "truthsayer" — will help him get home. When the Hazen appears, he "probes" Jody and announces that he is alien to their world. And his reason for being there? He promises to have an answer to that by tomorrow.

Understandably traumatized by this discovery, Jody is shown his "new world" by Albee, who is shocked by Jody's telling of his own. Albee explains his own world, and especially the kivats, stone structures allegedly offering protection against evil that Jody had seen the day before. That night, as the Hazen is about to give Jody the answer, hordes of demons attack. Jody, Albee, and Mindy flee for their lives, and seek help elsewhere. Jody is touched by his new friends' concern, but he continues to wrestle with his feelings about his real family ("missing people you care about is a hard thing; especially when you know they miss you, too").

From then on, Jody is beset by hideous dreams, is confronted with various manifestations of Evil, an eccentric wizard, a magical dog, and other residents of this fascinating land, whose purpose for being is no less strange and compelling than his own. In the end, though, it is up to Jody to make a decision — that will save or damn their land and his.

About the Author

D.B. Kier has been a college professor/writer for many years. Though trained as a historian, his greatest fondness is for fantasy. Jody is one of three fantasies he has written, with a fourth in progress. There will be many more!