Book summary

Along with his somewhat odd girlfriend, a teacher travels to a small Missouri town with the intention of writing a biography of his favorite author, a deceased children's writer named Marshall France. As his research commences, he begins to see evidence that France's writing has bled off of the printed page and onto the "real" world. Originally published in 1980, this was Carroll's debut novel, and it introduces one of the overriding themes of his early works: that of the ultimate fluidity between the actual and the fictional.