The Wood Wife - Tor Fantasy

Product Review

Leaving behind her fashionable West Coast life, Maggie Black comes to the Southwestern desert to pursue her passion and he dreams. Her mentor, the acclaimed poet Davis Cooper, has mysteriously died in the canyons east of Tucson, bequeathing her his estate and the mystery of his life--and death.

Maggie is astonished by the power of this harsh but beautiful land and captivated by the uncommon people who call it home--especially Fox, a man unlike any she has ever known, who understands the desert's special power.

As she reads cooper's letters and learns the secrets of his life, Maggie comes face-to-face with the wild, ancient spirits of the desert--and discovers the hidden power at its heart, a power that will take her on a journey like no other.

Amazon.com Review

Journalist and ex-poet Maggie Black has inherited the estate of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Davis Cooper, with whom she corresponded for years, but never met. Maggie is a cosmopolitan woman of the West Coast and Europe, and a child of the Appalachian mountains; she has no interest in the desert. She has an ex-husband she still loves in L.A. And Davis Cooper drowned in the Arizona desert, the victim of a mysterious murder. Maggie has many reasons to stay away. Yet she moves to Cooper's desert home, seeking to unravel the secrets of Cooper and his late lover, the mad painter Anna Naverra. But these, Maggie will discover, are not the desert's only mysteries. Ancient powers are stirring--enigmatic and dangerous spirits that would use humans for their own purposes.

Terri Windling is the most important and influential fantasy editor of the 1980s and 1990s: Her many accomplishments include editing (and often discovering) a pantheon of fantasy gods--Steven Brust, Emma Bull, Charles de Lint, Jane Yolen, and many more. She edits, with Ellen Datlow, the indispensible annual Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and the acclaimed revisionist fairy-tale anthology series that began with Snow White, Blood Red. She has won the World Fantasy Award five times. So it's not too surprising that her first novel, The Wood Wife, is well written, fascinating, insightful, and the winner of the 1997 Mythopoeic Award for Best Novel. --Cynthia Ward

Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review

(45 customer reviews)

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful

Haunting Tale That Captures The Sonoran Desert, April 13, 2001

Elyon (Mesilla, New Mexico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wood Wife (Tor Fantasy) (Mass Market Paperback)

I have been to Tuscon only once, but Terri Windling's tale brought the Sonoran desert town and its surrounding mountains back to life, stirring reminiscences of the sparse yet magical landscape in which the ever-sprawling and ever-growing urban, and thus increasingly incongruous, city is nestled. Through her words I was again able to travel the streets and canyons of Tuscon and the Rincons, experiencing the heat and dust of summer and sandy, dry washes, seeing again the stately, suggestively sentient assembly of saguaro, the ephemeral, blood-red blooms of the ocotillo. And, yes, viewing the saguaro one can truly believe Maria Rosa's bedtime story that at night, when no one is looking, the saguaro gather to dance. In the imagination, Terri Windling has beautifully and magically captured the Sonoran desert with her prose.While I in part agree with M. Weaver's demanding yet incisive observations, I cannot concur with the harshness of his final ranking and conclusions. True, the...Read more

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful

Magick and Myth in the Sonoran Desert, February 2, 1998

swinn@mail.utexas.edu (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wood Wife (Tor Fantasy) (Mass Market Paperback)

This is the first full length novel of Terri Windling's that I've read. For years I've appreciated her seemingly tireless work in bringing us all sorts of fabulous short stories in her various anthologies, and I am not in the least disappointed in her novel. The Wood Wife is beautiful, brilliant, strange and powerful. Anyone who's ever been to Tucson will understand the magic that lives there, and how Windling captured that magic perfectly in her wonderful story. Being a poet myself, I was thrilled at Windling's use of poetry and representation of poets. All in all, an extremely satisfying book, and highly recommended by this die hard fan of Urban Fantasy literature! And congratulations to Terri Windling for receiving the 1997 Mythopoeic Award for this book. Well deserved!!

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful

Brilliant!, October 6, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Wood Wife (Tor Fantasy) (Mass Market Paperback)

I wasn't familiar with Ms. Windling's work before this brilliant book. It was in the "Fantasy/Sci Fi" section of the bookstore--but it's really more like magic realism. I found out about it because American readers voted it one of the 100 Best Books of the 20th Century (the Modern Library 100 Best poll, check out their web site). I had to go out and buy a copy of the U.K. edition to find out why a writer I'd never heard of was on the list right next to William Faulkner. And I was gob smacked! What a book! It isn't like anything I've ever read before. I thought fantasy was all like hobbits and dragons but this is more like Alastair Grey or Angela Carter or Italo Calvino, in other words surrealistic, strange, intelligent. Filled with folkmore and mythology, some of it Native American, some of it Mexican, some of European and brought to life in a brilliant way. It's made me look at America in a whole new light. I'm recommending it to everyone I know and working my...Read more