The Sheltering Pine: A Fantasy of the North

None but the most ambitious of writers adopt fantasy as the motif in their first novel, and few achieve success with it. Mr. Angus, however, has succeeded with brilliance in this strange, haunting story which deals with a man who lived under the protection and guidance of the ancient spirits of a pine tree. All that men hold most precious in life was his: worldly success; a wife who had been in his dreams since childhood; a home of beauty and an unassailable happiness that was broken only when his guardians demanded their time-honoured payment. Thwarted in their first attempt, they bided their time for nearly twenty years and it remained for a stranger to break the spell and defeat their power. There are unusual qualities in this novel -- qualities of haunting, disturbing beauty; an almost eerie whisper which seems to breathe through its pages, as the winds breathed through the branches of the sheltering pine....