Winnie is at once horrified and intrigued when she hears their story. They look exactly the same way they did on the day they first drank from the spring. Jesse and Mae are part of the Tuck family, who live at the far edge of the forest, and what’s more, they never age. Winnie is upset until Mae plays a gentle tune on her music box and that seems to calm her. She tries to join him, but he discourages her from drinking, and Winnie finds herself being spirited away to the boy’s house by his mother, Mae. She spies a spring bursting out from under a tree in a clearing and also a boy, Jesse drinking out of it. One day she does venture into the forest, and as the day is very hot, looks around for a place to get a drink. Winnie spends her days in her yard gazing at the forest next to her family’s home, wondering what it would be like to sneak away.

Her home is loving but very presentational, as the Fosters are one of the oldest and richest families in Treegap. Originally published in 1975, the story’s main character is ten-year old Winnie Foster, who lives in a cottage in a little town called Treegap. The late Natalie Babbitt explored this idea in what is probably her most famous book, Tuck Everlasting.

If a being isn’t supernatural, immortality is kind of an anathema. What would you do if you had all the time in the world? I would think it would get boring after a while because you would see history cycle around and cycle around with people and nations making the same mistakes over and over again.

Tuck everlasting movie review