Publisher's Synopsis
WILD, VISUAL, TRANSPORTING - A GRAND ADVENTURE
Joe decided to run away. But the letter arrived. The letter would change his life. It happened like this.
On his eighth birthday, Joe, a tiny, clever orphan, decides to escape from Josiah Bloomingvale Dent's perfectly boring boarding school. Devised with his imaginary swashbuckling pals, the escape plan is foolproof. Of course, it fails.
Foiled, Joe is doomed. Unexpectedly, he receives a letter that reunites him with his enigmatic grandfather, the proprietor of an enchanted castle, Dream Hall.
Within days of arrival, Joe is faced with the task of rescuing forest dwellers, recovering their secret, and saving the world from artificial and perhaps poisonous ingredients being put into a favorite food. To succeed will take derring-do for greed, mystery, and murderous Strangeways stand in his path.
As a writer, archaeologist and ethnographer, film and audio-visual maker, the author has trekked and explored some of the earth's most isolated areas to record the lives and stories of people who give the world its sacred soul. From Asia to Arabia, from the Arctic to the Amazon, to rarely visited isles and archipelagos, he has searched these stories and believes the most important thing is people and their narrative, for he finds in all of them a moral and a guide -- especially in children's tales.
