How long can Death be kept tied up in a sack hanging from a high branch of a maple tree outside the bedroom window above Jack Bean's fix-it shop, The Wizard of Odds?
People think they know Jack. Although he denies the story, he has long been believed to have killed a giant who lived in the land above a beanstalk. Jack, the Novel, is a tale in which Jack's encounters and battles draw on myth and folklore from various cultures, philosophy and theology, and from the zeitgeist of our time. Jack's story follows him from his early teens, living with his mother in a Carolina mountain log home battered by the northwest winds of winter into a future in which he grows up during a period known as the Dissolution, the chaotic period following the breakdown of democracies, their economies and governments. He sets out to stop the northwest wind from blowing and meets the mysterious Jacob Ruach who tells him he has been chosen to maintain the boundary between what-is and what-might-have-been. Jack, Jacob says, is to be his successor.
The encounter with Jacob Ruach leads to many adventures. After years spent wandering over the former United States fighting demons and monstrous creatures such as the Firedragaman, Jack ends up running his fix-it shop in a rust-belt town in the hills of western Massachusetts. Here he mentors Jaqueline Dubois, a thirteen year-old girl who grows into the woman who will replace him as a keeper of the boundary between what-is and what-might-have-been. And, he must decide what to do about Death tied up in that sack hanging high in the maple tree outside his bedroom window.
