Other times they traveled all over the world, just the two of them, like the best of buddies. Sometimes she would imagine that she and her mom lived on a magical island where the trees dripped fruit. What did she think about during those endless hours in the laurel hedge? As a child, she made an imaginary world so real that she could feel and taste it today. Once upon a time she needed a redoubt of her own. She has a history of her own that informs her ability to relate to her clients. We follow her as she unearths a horrific past that helps explain how York came to be where and who he is. The Lady had been hired by York’s attorneys to look into his case. After being on death row for twelve years, York had decided to abstain from any further appeals. But enchantment is not reserved for the inmate alone.Īn investigator, known only as The Lady, is working on the case of a prisoner named York. I was reminded, in a way, of Tolkien’s Gollum, the battle between the darkness and the light within a single being. That he is able to find enchantment in this darkest of situations is breathtaking. He is also able to perceive feelings and needs in others, observing from his isolation, and offering a bit of narrator omniscience. He visualizes his very sweat rising to join the atmosphere and raining down on China. He sees small men with hammers in the walls (a particularly Lovecraftian notion) and flibber-gibbets, beings who feed on the warmth of death itself. The rumblings of tectonic activity become golden horses racing underground.

And he interprets his surroundings through a magical lens. In reading, he has the freedom his external circumstances preclude. I want to tell you while I still have time, before they close the black curtain and I take my final bow. The most wonderful enchanted things happen here-the most enchanted things you can imagine.

In the death row of a stone prison somewhere in America, a nameless inmate, entombed in a lightless dungeon, has constructed a fantastical appreciation for the world he inhabits, bringing a glorious light into his Stygian darkness. There are three primary and several very strongly written secondary characters whose stories are interwoven. She has written a novel about identity, understanding, the roots of crime, the reality of prison life, the possibility for redemption, and the ability of people to use imagination to rise beyond the purely material to the transcendent.

This is the place of true imagination.Rene Denfeld, the author of The Enchanted, has the heart of a warrior and the soul of a poet. What matters in prison is not who you are but what you want to become.

The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld