In this companion volume to their collaboration An Old Man's Winter Night, Tom Dawe and Veselina Tomova present a fascinating, tantalizing, and chilling collection of fairy lore. No benign tooth fairies here; these fairies are amoral, tricky, dangerous, and beguiling.

A young school teacher learns about strange lights in a foreboding marsh; a nurse in a remote outport visits the baby she delivered just weeks before to find a devastating change; a woman meets a mysterious funeral procession late one evening; a musician happens upon a group of strange little people; a girl is entranced by a strange green butterfly. The pages of Spirited Away are populated by those who wander onto fairy paths or fall under the spell of mysterious music; by the fairy-led—people lost in surroundings long familiar; by changelings; by people who stray onto fairy turf, and experience unnerving events.

These literary renderings of stories and anecdotes Dawe has collected across the province offer an accessible and engaging introduction to one of Newfoundland and Labrador's most powerful and peculiar folk traditions. Tomova's darkly poetic wood-cut illustrations plumb the fascinating heart of these strange and affecting tales.

Tom Dawe has been a high-school teacher, English professor, visual artist, editor, writer, and poet. He has published seventeen volumes of work, which include poetry, folklore, and children’s literature. His latest works include Where Genesis Begins (Breakwater, 2009), winner of the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award, and Moocher in the Lun (Flanker Press, 2010), winner of the 2010 Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards–Bruneau Family Children’s/Young Adult Literature Award.In the 1970s, during the “Newfoundland Renaissance,” he was one of the founders of Breakwater Books, a founding editor of TickleAce, and prose editor of the Livyere, a folklore journal. In 2002, Martina Seifert’s comprehensive study, Rewriting Newfoundland Mythology: The Works of Tom Dawe, was published in Germany and in Cambridge, MA.Tom Dawe is the recipient of many awards and honours. In 2007, he was awarded a lifetime membership for the Writers’ Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador and was elected to the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council Hall of Honour. In 2010, he was named St. John’s Poet Laureate. In 2012, he was named a member to the Order of Canada and also to the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Tom Dawe's profile page

Veselina Tomova's profile page

• Winner, American Folklore Society - Aesop Accolades

"Spirited Away is a book to be enjoyed in front of a cozy fire or tucked up on the sofa with a hot water bottle, somewhere very safe and far from the spirits depicted and described so that the horrors are far away—though there is always the possibility that one is lurking under the bed... a deliciously scary thought. Highly Recommended."

CM Magazine

"Tom Dawe tells some disturbing stories in Spirited Away, enhancing the atmosphere with the flavour of Newfoundland and coastal Labrador. From the music to blueberry picking and the vocabulary much unknown to me ... these are the stories of the people of Newfoundland. Veselina Tomova's woodcut illustrations, in dark tones and snatches of light, reflect the very setting in which the fairies appear. These are not your Disney fairies. They are frightening, and Tom Dawe ensures that we know that they are real."

Helen Kubiw

"Dawe is a poet, which is reflected in his simple, but lyrical, text. Tomova's sinister woodcuts, with their muted colours and grotesque figures, draw the reader deeper into the unsettling world of these dark fairies. Together, they've perfectly captured the sweet terror that comes when sitting by a flickering light and listening to unearthly tales."

Quill & Quire