My most recent book for adults is Hiddensee, subtitled A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker. It is about the life of the toymaker known as Godfather Drosselmeier. In my telling, Drosselmeier suffered a trauma in his boyhood; his father took him out to the woods to kill him with an axe. The lad survived, but ever after he was lopsided, awkward; his life was untenable. He didn’t fit in anywhere. He fell in love only twice and both times it ended badly. He never married, never had children. He did nothing but make toys. What sort of a contribution to the universe is that? And yet, when his
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