some elaborate logical or legal argument or a trick
ending, whereby the unhappy soul is saved.
The farmer in this case is Jabez Stone, who
foolishly offers to sell his soul after a long string of
misfortunes plagues his farm and family. The devil
shows up, and Stone feels honor bound to com-
plete the deal, after which he prospers, although
thoughts of his fate cloud his happiness. In the
final days before the contract ends, the desperate
man seeks out Daniel Webster, the most promi-
nent lawyer and politician in the country, and
begs for his help. Webster cannot abandon a fel-
low resident of New Hampshire, so he agrees to
take the case, and that very night the devil ap-
pears to collect his fee.
In most similar stories the reader would then be
treated to thrust and counterthrust, but Benét takes
a more remote approach, informing us that Web-
ster’s arguments were brilliant but ineffective rather
than showing us. As a final resort Webster insists on
a jury trial, and the devil conjures up a judge and
jury from among the most reprehensible, criminal,
and traitorous Americans he can cull from among
the dead. The apparitions are clearly not in sympa-
thy with Stone, but Webster tries anyway, arguing
until dawn with an eloquence that impresses even
the damned. Ultimately, despite Webster’s inability
to muster a convincing legal argument, the jury
finds in Stone’s favor as a reward for such a prodi-
gious effort. The devil, thwarted, hopes to punish
Webster by telling him his own future, the failure of
his aspirations to be president and the early death of
his sons, but Webster remains unmoved.
The story is thus more a celebration of Ameri-
cana than fantasy or the supernatural. It was made
into a motion picture (1941) and has been per-
formed at various times on the stage. Although the
two sequels are minor, Benét wrote one other no-
table fantasy story, “Johnny Pye & the Fool Killer”
(1937).
Dexter, Susan(1955– )
Susan Dexter was one of a handful of new writers
who emerged in the fantasy field during the early
1980s, at which time it was customary for even
fantasy epics to contain elements of light humor.
Her initial work was, almost inevitably for that
genre, a trilogy, the Winter King’s War consisting
of The Ring of Allaire(1981), The Sword of Calan-
dra (1985), and The Mountains of Channadran
(1986). The sequence opens with a quest, an ap-
prentice taking over his master’s mission to find a
magic horse, defeat a dragon, and rescue a
princess, all situations drawn from classic mythol-
ogy. Dexter employs a light authorial hand, and de-
spite the dangers and adventures, the reader never
doubts that the hero will prevail. In the second
volume the hero discovers that he is, in fact, the
rightful heir to the throne, which he can gain only
by finding a magical sword and which occupies him
during his second quest. Having ascended to the
throne in the concluding volume, he now faces a
threat to his people and confronts an evil sorcerer,
thus adding the final cliché of modern fantasy. The
trilogy is openly, even proudly, derivative, but Dex-
ter’s light-hearted approach is refreshing.
Dexter’s second trilogy, the Warhorse of Es-
dragon, also has a fairy tale quality but is consider-
ably more interesting in its own right. The Prince of
Ill Luck(1994) introduces the protagonist, a young
man whose life has been shadowed by a curse of
bad luck. In the first volume he falls in love with a
princess and agrees to help her locate her missing
parents, a task more difficult than it first appears.
The Wind-Witch(1995) takes an even more serious
turn, with war spreading chaos over the country-
side. The war and other outstanding issues are re-
solved in The True Knight(1996), a coming-of-age
story in which two heroes discover the truth about
themselves and their personal destinies. This sec-
ond trilogy is more serious in tone and more origi-
nal in content, but its author has since produced
very little new fiction.
Dexter also wrote two nonseries novels. The
Wizard’s Shadow(1993) is considerably more orig-
inal than her other work. A traveling peddler
agrees to provide transportation for a wizard’s
ghost, but by doing so he becomes tangled up in
the mystery of the wizard’s death at the hands of
one of his enemies. Moonlight(2001), for younger
readers, follows the efforts of another apprentice,
this one assisted by an intelligent cat, to rescue a
unicorn. Dexter’s rare short stories vary in qual-
ity, and “Thistledown” (1991) is her best at that
length.88 Dexter, Susan