This is a quiet, intimate, and delightfully quirky novel from the dreamtime that does not fit handily into familiar categories. With grace and wry humour, this tale comes to life in the mountain fastness of a possible recent past-or parallel history-to evoke a world in which elves and dwarves burst from legend into life. The 'change of mind' of the title belongs to Meg Christmas, firewatcher in the forest ranges of a western sierra. When crisis threatens the strange, small folk who befriend her, she must plumb within herself for abilities to confront, accept, and save a reality previously unsuspected. This brilliant work from poet and artist Robert Stikmanz blends fantasy, speculative science fiction, and social critique into a unique call for an imaginative leap of faith in the belief in pleasure and compassion, into a realisation that the ages-old longing for a paradise of flesh and soul is not a fairy tale but a destiny.