For millennia, selected juvenile dragons from the Seven Kingdoms of Saridon have been commissioned to cross the dimensional boundaries to Earth on missions to accompany gifted or unique humans through their lives to their destinies. Over the years, as dragon society has changed, the original purpose and intent of this Shadowing have been lost, but the programme, entrenched in Saridonian tradition, continues, although much reduced in magnitude. Banpine, a young Silver Iridescent dragon, is sent to Earth to Shadow a human girl named Lydia, born in Saskatchewan in the mid-1950s into a modest home and apparently ordinary family. But things take a dark turn when his young human becomes the victim of sexual and emotional abuse by her father. When at last Lydia reveals the crime to her siblings and mother, she finds herself trapped in a web of duplicity as they attempt to preserve the fiction that their family is whole and functional. As Banpine supports Lydia, helping her to survive the atrocities committed against her, the dragon and human forge a relationship unique in the annals of the Shadow Programme—one that ignites an earthshaking reformation in the dimension of dragons. Not a Fairy Tale is a sophisticated adult fantasy that attacks individual and social apathy toward the suffering of others, making it clear that those who deny or ignore the existence of acts of aggression are as culpable as the perpetrator. It shines an often-uncomfortable light on the way that blind adherence to tradition and devotion to the status quo silence the oppressed and perpetuate abuse. With or without the help of dragons, healing can only begin with speaking and being heard.