When Alan Garner was a child, he almost died three times. A very sickly boy, he suffered variously from spinal and cerebral meningitis, pleurisy, pneumonia, and diphtheria, at times so ill that he could neither speak nor move. It was on these occasions that, although he was not technically dead, the doctors at the time felt there was no hope for him and told his parents that, even if their son recovered, his brain would be severely damaged. But the young Garner had other ideas: he eventually recovered from his illnesses, went on to school at Oxford, and became an award-winning author. Respected for his knowledge of folklore and mythology, Garner is best known for such fantasy novels as Elidor, The Owl Service, and Red Shift, as well as his "Stone Book" quartet. With works such as these, he "was throughout most of the 1960s and '70s...