My particular thanks to John Eccker, who went “above and beyond the call” after the first draft and never looked back.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever
As a young man-a novelist, happily married, with an infant son, Roger— Thomas Covenant is inexplicably stricken with leprosy. After the last two fingers of his right hand are amputated, medications arrest the progress of Covenant’s affliction, but he is taught that his only hope of survival lies in protecting himself obsessively from any form of injury. He is devastated when his wife, Joan, abandons and divorces him in order to protect their son from exposure.
Other blows to his emotional stability follow. Fearing the mysterious nature of his illness, the people around him cast him in the traditional role of the leper: a pariah, outcast and unclean. In addition, he discovers that he has become impotent-and unable to write. Grimly he struggles to go on living; but as the pressure of his loneliness mounts, he begins to experience prolonged episodes of unconsciousness, during which he appears to have adventures in a magical realm known only as the Land.
In the Land, physical and emotional health are tangible forces, made palpable by an eldritch energy called Earthpower.
