In an alternate frontier America where folk magic works and every settler carries a knack, Alvin Miller is born the seventh son of a seventh son, a birth that marks him for something rare. From his first night, water and darkness seem to conspire against him, and a force he cannot yet name reaches into the loving safety of his family's homestead to undo him. This first Tales of Alvin Maker builds a whole American mythology out of homespun materials: doodlebugs, hexes, torch-girls who glimpse the future, and a boy with the raw gift to make.