Fifty-five years in the making, “From the Dust Returned” grew out of a short story, “Homecoming,” which appeared in the October 1946 issue of Mademoiselle magazine. Bradbury has published just five other stories about the Elliots, an outlandish, greathearted and loving-spirited Halloween creature clan and their “abnormal” (i.e., his face is reflected in the mirror!) adopted son Timothy. Over the years, Bradbury readers have clamored for more Elliott tales.
A lifelong labor of love, “From the Dust Returned” is a novel (in much the way “The Martian Chronicles” is a novel) comprised of the previously published six stories interwoven with newer chapters and “connective tissue” that give us an unforgettable portrait of the rise and fall of a most peculiar brood. Here are Cecy, “the one who dreams,” a young girl yearning for love who can experience the world only through the travels of her mind; Uncle Einar, a fun-loving, proud-winged vampire who loses his ability to fly; Great Grandmère, the family matriarch, who speaks of millennia gone by from deep within her mummified wrappings; and Tom, a farm boy whom Cecy “meets” and falls in love with one night during one of her spirit-borne journeys.
The news comes after announcements last year that both Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine and his The Martian Chronicles are headed to the screen.
