Deep in the woods, in a crooked house full of stairs, a young boy is kept prisoner by his uncle. He cannot meet other children, or have any friends. He holds the key to a secret.Meanwhile, in a quiet village, Frans the schoolteacher invents incredible stories of perilous deeds, shipwrecks, desert islands, and haunted castles to entertain his pupils, in which he is the hero. Then one stormy evening, a mysterious letter blows onto his doormat, summoning him to a meeting.Suddenly, Frans is on a real-life mission, one in which he will encounter magicians, secret passages, conspiracies, hidden treasure, a black cat with green eyes and a sealed parchment which predicts the future.He will learn the secret of the Seven Ways.He will find seven allies.And he will make a fearsome enemy.The adventure has begun...

Tonke Dragt was born in 1930 in Jakarta. When she was twelve, she was imprisoned in a Japanese camp during the war, where she wrote her very first book using begged and borrowed paper. After the war, she and her family moved to the Netherlands, where she became an art teacher. In 1962 she published her most famous story, The Letter for the King, which won the Children's Book of the Year Award and has been translated into sixteen languages; its sequel, The Secrets of the Wild Wood, followed in 1965, and both are published by Pushkin Press. Dragt was awarded the State Prize for Youth Literature in 1976 and was knighted in 2001.