Published in 2014
233 pages
Rene Denfeld is the bestselling author of THE CHILD FINDER, THE ENCHANTED and thee THE BUTTERFLY GIRL, which Margaret Atwood raved on twitter is “a heartbreaking, finger-gnawing, yet ultimately hopeful novel.”
Rene’s poetic fiction has won numerous awards including the French Prix, an ALA Medal for Excellence and an IMPAC listing. Rene works as an investigator, including exonerating innocents from prison and helping sex trafficking victims. Rene has also been a foster parent for 20 years, and is the happy mother to several children adopted from foster care. In 2017 she was awarded the Break The Silence Award for her advocacy work, and the New York Times named her hero of the year.
What is this book about?
This is an enchanted place. Others don’t see it, but I do.
The enchanted place is an ancient stone prison, viewed through the eyes of a death row inmate who finds escape in his books and in re-imagining life around him, weaving a fantastical story of the people he observes and the world he inhabits. Fearful and reclusive, he senses what others cannot. Though bars confine him every minute of every day, he marries magical visions of golden horses running beneath the prison, heat flowing like molten metal from their backs, with the devastating violence of prison life.
Two outsiders venture here: a fallen priest, and the Lady, an investigator who searches for buried information from prisoners’ pasts that can save those soon-to-be-executed. Digging into the background of a killer named York, she uncovers wrenching truths that challenge familiar notions of victim and criminal, innocence and guilt, honour and corruption-ultimately revealing shocking secrets of her own.
