A Green and Ancient Light
About this ebook
A young boy's serene summer day is shattered by the crash of a bullet-riddled enemy plane. Further disrupting the tranquility are the arrival of Grandmother's strange and unusual friend Mr. Girandole, and the discovery of a riddle in the sacred grove of ruins behind Grandmother's house. In a sumptuous idyllic setting and overshadowed by the threat of war, four unlikely allies learn the values of courage, sacrifice, and what it means to be a family.
In time for its 10th anniversary, a new edition of A Green and Ancient Light.
Praise for A Green and Ancient Light:
"The prose is frequently as beautiful as the images it evokes [...] This gentle, engaging, and very personal coming-of-age story is mythic in its universality." — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"Fans of John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things will enjoy this bittersweet fantasy with a mystery at its core." — Booklist
"The same magic flows in its veins as does in those of the classic The Last Unicorn ... I left a piece of my heart with A Green and Ancient Light." — B&N Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog
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About the author
Frederic S. Durbin grew up in rural central Illinois, where his parents opened the town's first bookstore and his mother built libraries for the four public elementary schools. He studied classical languages, mythology, and English literature at Concordia College, River Forest (now Concordia University Chicago). After graduating summa cum laude, he served as a volunteer missionary teacher in Japan and taught ESL and writing at Niigata University for two decades. In 2011, he returned to the U.S. and lives with his wife in the wooded hills of western Pennsylvania. A community college writing coach, he is the author of the novels Dragonfly; A Green and Ancient Light, which won the Realm Award and was named a Best Fantasy of the Year by Publishers Weekly and a Reading List Honor Book by the American Library Association; and The Country Under Heaven, which was a Publishers Weekly staff pick and named the best horror novel of 2025 by the New York Public Library.
