Fairy Tale by Stephen King is a novel that tells the story of 17-year-old Charlie Reade. He meets and decides to care for a dog, Radar, and her aging owner, Howard Bowditch, after Bowditch suffered a fall.
Charlie learns that something seriously amiss in the locked shed on Bowditch’s property, and that the man had at least a bucketful of gold pellets. After Bowditch dies from a heart attack, Charlie listens to a recording Bowditch left for him, and hears a story of how the shed on top of a passageway to another world.
Part of what Bowditch tells of is a sundial in the other world that reverses the aging process, something Charlie desperately wanted to do with the dog who was now his, Radar, near death from old age. Charlie a third of the way through the book travels with Radar down the spiral staircase in the shed, and are in the other world.
When Charlie and Radar return home, he had been gone from October to February and King tells well the story of myth and wonder, one he notes as having wanted to write from early in the pandemic.
