One of the best ways to understand the child's inner life and rich fantasies is by reading fairy tales. The writer of fairy tales is endowed with this kind of understanding. Tucker's study focuses on Peter Pan, for years one of the most popular fairy tales. The author beautifully explicates the subtle ways the child's unconscious is able to respond to the various plots woven into this magnificent tale. He demonstrates how Barrie's background was conducive to this kind of story. Barrie's major difficulty was that he was never able to grow up. He lived much of his life in a child's fantasy world, and although this was developmentally tragic for him, it lent an extra dimension to his writing.