At the Back of the North Wind

Diamond is the young son of a coachman, a gentle boy who sleeps in the hayloft above the horses. One cold night a tall and beautiful woman appears at the chink in his wall, calling herself North Wind, and carries him out into the sky. She is at once tender and terrible, a nurse to some and a storm to others, and the journeys she takes him on lead toward the still country that lies at her back. MacDonald wraps a story of London poverty and a sick child inside a fairy tale, asking gently what death might really be. First serialized in 1868, it remains one of the tenderest children’s books of its century. Download the free PDF and EPUB edition.