Donal Grant — George MacDonald

A gothic thriller of good versus evil played out in the heart of a mysterious castle -- the sequel to Sir Gibbie by the 19th-century Scottish author.
 
As well as being MacDonald's longest book, the magnificent Donal Grant is a novel with everything -- a Gothic castle with hidden rooms and passageways, good guys and bad guys, mysteries and inheritances, and poignant yet bittersweet love. Little does Gibbie's friend Donal realize what he is in for when he takes a tutoring job at mysterious Castle Graham.
 
Woven throughout, of course, are many signature tunes of MacDonald's wisdom and spiritual insight, including one of C.S. Lewis's favorite MacDonald lines, that God is “easy to please but hard to satisfy.” Along with Malcolm, Donal Grant presents one of MacDonald's most intricate and riveting plots, led by another of his stellar characters of virtue and truth. Its massive length, however (786 pages in the original), difficult Scots dialect, and numerous digressive tangents, illustrate better than any MacDonald title the need for condensed contemporary editions. Donal Grant is unique in the MacDonald corpus as being originally released in two different editions in Great Britain and America. This updated edition by Michael Phillips, which Phillips ranks as one of his favorite MacDonald titles, epitomizes the value and significance of The Cullen Collection in bringing the fiction of George MacDonald alive for new generations.