A Beard Tangled in Dreams

Neil Gaiman meets Sigmund Freud in this imaginative retelling of the first American fairytale, Rip Van Winkle.

The original Rip Van Winkle was a modest sixty-four pages. Quite short for a tale spanning twenty years. Why so short? None of those pages accounted for all the years that languorous legend spent asleep. There has never been a single published word of what Rip dreamt all those years, until now. Those wildest of dreams follow Rip from the furthest reaches of his mysterious past, through every enchanted forest of folklore, to a wedding without end in the future. This remarkable sailing over the Sea of Dreams reveals not only the truth behind Rip Van Winkle and his notorious slumber, but the real meaning in dreams for us all.

As the novel progresses through the dream world, the chapters are separated by actual dreams from the likes of Sigmund Freud, HP Lovecraft, Lord Byron, J.R.R. Tolkien, and more. Those real dreams help to advance the fictional narrative, while also making the dream world all the more engrossing. The result is a unique, magical mystery tour which is emotionally powerful and entertaining. A list of fiction titles appealing to the same audience include Neil Gaiman's Snow, Glass, Apples, Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook, Alice, Sleeper and the Spindle, The Girl in Red, and Cinder.

From Fairytale Chicago author Steve Wiley comes another thought-provoking and unconventional fantasy, sure to help readers of all ages rediscover their own inner dreamer.