The central character of the novel is Truly Plaice, the largest child ever born in Aberdeen County, New York. Truly's mother Lily passes away a few minutes after her birth, and she and her sister Serena Jane are left in the care of their heartbroken father, Earl. Serena Jane is a beautiful child, and the town rallies around to provide her with the care that her devastated father is unable to provide. Truly, on the other hand, is taunted and humiliated, for she continues to grow at an astonishing rate. By the age of little more than a year, she is wearing the clothing of a four year old, and as a teenager, she will be bigger than any man in the entire county.

Earl Plaice refuses to take his younger daughter to the local physician, blaming Dr. Morgan for his wife's death, although Lily had been diagnosed with inoperable breast cancer during her pregnancy and did not have long to live. We learn later that Truly was born with a rare but treatable disease in which an over-active pituitary gland causes rapid growth and drastic enlargement of the bones. When Earl Plaice dies unexpectedly, Serena Jane is taken in by the local minister and his wife to be reared in style, but Truly is sent to live with the downtrodden Dyerson family on their rundown farm outside town.

Truly is caring for her young nephew years later when she realizes that an heirloom quilt in the Morgan house is actually the missing "book of shadows" of Tabitha Dyerson, a legendary Aberdeen County wise woman, witch and healer. She deciphers the quilt and dons Tabitha's mantle with mixed results, learning as she practices her craft that love comes in all sizes, and that healing, compassion and the granting of merciful death are irrevocably entwined in the wise woman's art.

This is one of those rare novels in which magic, inner beauty and soulful abundance triumph over ugliness and prejudice. In the hands of another author, "Little Giant" could have been a depressing reading experience, but Tiffany Baker has crafted a novel which is exquisite and a pleasure to read. In Truly Plaice she has created a remarkable character and endowed her with an intelligence, dark humor and elemental grace which will sustain her through a hellish childhood and adolescence and on into a maturity where she will bloom gloriously, albeit belatedly. I did not realize until I had finished reading that "Little Giant" was Tiffany's first published novel.

As third or tenth novel, "Little Giant" would have been wonderful - as a first novel, it is astonishing and an absolute wonder. Bravo!