STEP INTO THE
BIG WOODS
WITH A
SHORT EXCERPT
The Nocturns
When the last light fades and the great golden sun slips beyond the hills, the Big Woods come alive.
The Nocturns—those beloved creatures of shadow and moonbeam—tumble forth to greet the night as an old and trusted friend. For them, darkness is not something to be feared. It is home.
But not for Howard.
Howard the Raccoon is a creature of sharp eyes and sharper opinions, utterly convinced that only what can be seen can be known. He is small, bookish, and thoroughly unconvinced by the night—the son of a brave father he could never hope to resemble, living among Nocturns who embrace the dark while he retreats from it. What use is a world you cannot examine, measure, or fully understand? Give him daylight—honest, clear, and certain—every time.
Then the darkness swallows him whole.
Lost among the whispering trees, chased by hounds, tempted by a snake, and face to face with the most mysterious figure in the Big Woods, Howard must navigate a single extraordinary night with nothing but his wits, a battered almanac, and the faint possibility that everything he has always believed about the dark might be wrong.
By the time the moon sets and the first pale suggestion of dawn creeps across the wood, Howard will have learned what no amount of daylight could ever have taught him—that the deepest knowing does not live behind the eyes.
It lives in the heart.