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The Heron's Wife

1999

Madeline Heller knew she was reckless. She had flown to London from New York two days ahead of schedule and was now checked into her room at the Lion Park Hotel in Knightsbridge. The air was still and filled with dust motes; the windows hadn't been opened in months. Everything smelled like cedar and lavender. Maddy felt hot and exhausted from her travels but she didn't bother to turn on the air conditioner. She was madly, horribly, ridiculously in love with the wrong man and it made her want to lie there on the bed, immobilized.

Madeline wasn't stupid; she was an attorney in New York. She was thirty-four years old and had graduated from Oberlin and NYU Law School, a tall woman with long black hair. Many people thought she was beautiful and smart, but none of those people mattered. They didn't know her. They had no idea she was a traitor to her own flesh and blood. They would never have guessed she would throw her life away so easily, without thinking twice.

There was good love and there was bad love. There was the kind that helped raise a person above her failings and there was the desperate sort that struck when someone least wanted or expected it. That was what had happened to Maddy this past spring when she'd come to London to help plan her sister's wedding. Allie hadn't even asked for her help; it was their mother, Lucy, who'd told Maddy she should go to London and assist with the preparations; she was the maid of honor after all. And then when she got there, Allie had already taken care of everything, just as she always did.

Allie was older by thirteen months. She was the good sister, the perfect sister, the one who had everything. She was a writer who had published an extremely popular children's book. When she walked down the street people often recognized her, and she was always willing to sign scraps of paper for someone's child or present a fan with one of the bookplates she carried in her purse. Once a year she came back to the States to give readings for what had become a perennially popular event where children dressed up in bird costumes. There were nine- and ten-year-old cardinals and ducks and crows all waiting on line to have their copy of The Heron's Wife signed. Maddy sometimes accompanied her sister on tour. She couldn't believe all the fuss over a silly children's story, one Allie had pinched from a tale their mother used to tell. Technically, the story belonged to Maddy as much as it did to her sister, not that she'd felt the need to write a book or change it inside out to suit herself.

The story was one Lucy Heller would tell down by the marsh where the girls had grown up. Lucy's own mother, the girls' grandmother, had waded barefoot into a pond in Central Park to talk to a huge blue heron. She didn't care what people thought; she just went right in. She'd asked the heron to watch over Lucy and he always had. Now Lucy had asked him to protect her own girls and he had come to live in their marsh in Connecticut.

"How can a heron watch over a person?" Maddy had whispered to her sister. She didn't have much faith in stories, even though she was only eight years old. In that way, she was very much the skeptic her mother had been.

"He can have two separate lives," Allie was quick to say, as though the answer was simple, if only Maddy could unwind the mysteries of the universe. "He has his heron life up in the sky and his life down here."

"I'm glad he can help us both," Maddy said.

"Don't be ridiculous." Allie was always so definite and sure of herself. "The blue heron only has one true love."

And so it came to be in Allie's book. There was a woman who...

 

The bewitching author Alice Hoffman has written another work of startling lyrical beauty about the alchemical nature of love and about loss, choices, and consequences. The novel follows the intergenerational links among three women, bestowing layers of truth, and acts of bravery and betrayal, with a liberal dusting of the supernatural. Set primarily in London in the present on the advent of a wedding, the story shifts back in time twice to reveal the ultimate catalyst that brings about each woman's destiny. Hoffman's fairy tale of doomed, misguided love advances toward a crescendo of healing and hope. Promising wonder, Nancy Travis's clear enunciations bridge the thin boundary between reality and the dream life. Her expressive and modulated delivery is the enchanting vessel for Hoffman's luminous prose. A.W. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

 

"Is there an American novelist who understands the complicated and mulitfacted nature of love in all its manifestations -- romantic, familial, platonic -- better than Alice Hoffman?... Some critics have minimed the complexity of Hoffman's work by refering to her as a romance writers. Well, Hoffman is a romance writer, but then so were Flaubert, Proust, the Bronte sisters, and Jane Austen. The Third Angel is indeed a romance, but one of intricacy and pathos, with characters beautifully, believably and empathetically drawn....The Third Angel represents yet another strong, visceral and deeply, darkly moving tale of love and heatbreak, tragedy and redemption from a writer whose keen ear for the measure struck by the beat of the human heart is unparalleled. The Third Angel is an intense, provocative and throughly affecting novel."

 

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette...

"Like Michael Cunningham's 'The Hours,' Hoffman's tale weaves the stories of women at key moments in their lives with revelations both stunning and inevitable."

 

The Economist...

"Its realism, combined with a refreshing lightness and its success in portraying emotion with empathy, draws the reader into a deep involvement with the books' appealing yet flawed characters. Each woman faces up to her challengers in her own way, proving that everyone in the end is responsible for his or her own destiny."

 

The Boston Globe...

"Hoffman's luminous language bounces us into accepting not only coincident but also its consequences."

 

The Columbus Dispatch...

"Alice Hoffman paints her books in big strokes and bright colors, with slashes of romantic reds and blacks. She's a teller of fairy tells, well-worn or new."

 

Charlotte Observer...

"With a graceful nod to the power of redemption, Alice Hoffman reminds readers we are all hurt and broken, stumbling through life and fumbling for love, but sometimes we can still find out way to where we want to go."

 

"Headstrong women, reckless love affairs and a liberal dusting of the supernatural are the pleasurable trademarks of an Alice Hoffman novel....Her passionate storytelling and
intense characters make a deeply personal connetion that should bewitch old fans and new readers alike."
-- People Magazine (A "People Pick,"

 

"Un-put-downable....The Third Angel soars....an unforgettable portrait of the depth of true love."

 

"Hoffman makes vivid and new the realization that grace, beauty, and forgiveness can arise out of the most devastating situations."

 

"Alice Hoffman's richly layered novel, The Third Angel, is one of her best."

 

"Hands down, this captivating book is one of Hoffman's best. It follows three women's lives as they flow together and apart, tributaries linked by the same tragic love story and mysterious ghost. You'll want to start it again as soon as you're done."

 

"A book that's hard to put away completely. Even long after it's finished, you may find its characters sneaking, like ghosts, back into your head."

 

"These stories capture the fleeting happiness of doomed, misguided love."

 

"Elegant and stunning....Hoffman interweaves the three storioes, gazing unerringly into forces that cause some people to self-destrut and others to find inner strength to last a lifetime."

 

"One of her best...an exceptionally well-structured, beguiling, and affecting triptych of catastrophic love stories....Not only is Hoffman spellbinding in this incandescent fusion of dark romance and penetrating psychic insight, she also opens diverse and compelling worlds, dramatizes the shocks and revelations that forge the self, and reveals the necessity and toll of empathy and kindness. Hoffman has transcended her own genre."

 

"The Third Angel places Hoffman at perhaps the pinnacle of her bountiful literary talents."

 

"A mesmerizing tale of the human condition....sure to please Hoffman's fans and win over new readers."

 

"The Third Angel is brilliantly crafted, deeply moving, and utterly enchanting. I loved these characters for their complexity, their unpredictability and for the way they showed subtle and shifting nuance in human nature. One of the best things about Alice Hoffman's writing is that she grounds you in detail and also frees your imagination to soar to places it has never been--often simultaneously.  Reading her is immensely satisfying--and addictive!"

 

"Alice Hoffman is my favorite writer."