The Enchanted: A Novel

Rene Denfeld

Mar 2014 · Harper Collins

About this ebook

“The Enchanted wrapped its beautiful and terrible fingers around me from the first page and refused to let go after the last. A wondrous book that finds transcendence in the most unlikely of places. . . . So dark yet so exquisite.” — Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus

An astonishing and redemptive novel for readers of Alice Sebold and Toni Morrison, told from the point of view of a convict whose magical interpretations of prison life allow him to find absolute joy while isolated from the rest of humanity and a female investigator who experiences her own personal salvation in her work as a death penalty investigator.

This is an enchanted place. Others don’t see it but I do.

The enchanted place is a high security prison and is relayed through the eyes of an inmate on death row who escapes his surroundings by immersing himself in books, and by re-imagining the world that surrounds him. Instead of focusing on the cloudy medical vines that snake across the floor, empty and waiting for the warden’s finger to press the red buttons, our narrator sees golden horses as they run deep under the earth, heat flowing like molten metal from their backs.

A woman and fallen priest haunt the prison halls--an unnamed female investigator only known as the Lady who is known for discovering information relating to soon-to-be executed inmates’ backgrounds that can be used to overturn their sentences. She is put on the case of a man named York and as she digs into his past, the experience brings up ghosts of her own and threatens to destroy everything that she has come to know about the enchanted place.

The Enchanted is a magical novel about redemption, the humanity that can lie within what is monstrous, and the human capacity to transcend and survive.

Ratings and reviews

I was swept up in this story from the first page to the last. Never had a worthwhile reason to put it down; I read it entirely over the course of a quiet Friday off. To describe this as "a book about Death Row inmates" does an immense disservice to the novel. "Exquisite prose" seems to be the go-to phrase in the reviews and it certainly fits. I cannot praise nor recommend this book enough- READ IT!

One of the best books l have read my heart pounded while the horses ran

About the author

Rene Denfeld is a bestselling author, licensed investigator, and foster mother. She is the author of the novels The Butterfly Girl, The Child Finder and The Enchanted. Her novels have won numerous awards including a French Prix, and The New York Times named her a 2017 hero of the year. She lives in Portland, Oregon.