


Alice has only briefly met Smoky at the home of her City cousin George Mouse. It has the effect of disorienting visitors and somehow protecting the family, and it proves to be a door leading to the outer realm of Faerie.Īt the beginning of the story, well after the deaths of Drinkwater and his wife, their great-granddaughter Daily Alice falls in love with and marries a stranger, ″Smoky″ Barnable. It is a composite of many styles, each built over and across the others, supposedly as a ″sampler″ for customers thinking about employing Drinkwater's firm. Somewhere around the start of the 20th century, Drinkwater designs and builds a house called Edgewood north of New York City.

Drinkwater gathers his thoughts into an ever-evolving book entitled The Architecture of Country Houses, which goes through at least six ever longer and more mystical editions. Towards the center is the realm of the fairies, which his wife, the Englishwoman Violet Bramble, can see and talk with but he can′t. Turn-of-the-century American architect John Drinkwater begins to suspect that within this world there lies another (and within that, another and another ad infinitum, each larger than the world that contains it). ( February 2022) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. This section's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed.
