When Mary Darling’s three children disappear through an open window into the night, leaving no footprints behind in the snow, she has a pretty good idea what happened to them. She had her own childhood adventures, you see. And while she doesn’t know exactly where the imaginary place called Neverland is, nor exactly how to find the ageless boy who calls himself Peter Pan, she does know where she ended up, when she was a girl.

The problem is that she is now a more or less respectable British mother, and women of her status don’t travel half a world away unaccompanied, for any reason. But Mary is willing and eager to do anything for Wendy, Michael and John. When Mary’s Uncle, Dr. John Watson, and his colleague Sherlock Holmes prove to be of very little help, she disguises herself and escapes to a ship headed in the right direction. Watson and Holmes are not far behind. Holmes’ amazing deductive abilities are hilariously not terribly useful.

What follows is a wonderful musing on the toughness required for motherhood, and the lack of innocence inherent in childhood. There are some snide comments about British Imperialism and the rigidity of rational science. But there’s plenty of adventure too. All the Peter Pan things are there—a bunch of displaced Native Americans enacting Peter’s idea of Indians, some decidedly dangerous mermaids, pirates who may actually be normal seamen, a one-handed Captain, and flying with fairy dust.

And sword fights, of course. Who knew that Mary Darling, who spends most of JM Barrie’s Peter Pan presumably sitting tearfully in front of the window, is actually trained in martial arts? And that her granddaughter, Jane, who canonically also went off with Peter Pan, would one day write the true story of Mary Darling and the other children who once were lost.