Rowan Garth writes fiction primarily for young people, but this story also powerfully attracts older readers with its real-world accounts of the village, its people and their surroundings in that fearfully treacherous winter. The story was delivered to Garth as an impossibly realistic dream, based in the village where he and his family lived. It relates to Garth's interests in the sustainability of the economics of the real world. It delivers Garth's message that the true reward for any individual in their fleeting lifetime, is only earned by trying hard, by seeking truth and by being generous with others, including, most important of all, the future generations who will inherit the earth.
