A review by jgwc54e5
The Wood Wife by Terri Windling

4.0

Wonderful, imaginative and evocative fantasy. Set mostly in Tucson, it combines many mythologies and characters along with poetry and art into a beautiful, cohesive story. The novel starts with Maggie Black inheriting the property in the desert of her friend, the poet Davis Cooper although they have never met face to face. Straightaway the landscape becomes a character, the plants, the animals, the rocks and other formations. There is some mystery to how Cooper has died and Maggie sets about going through his papers and also those of his wife, Anna, a painter in a Mexican surrealist style. Then Maggie becomes aware of the “spirits of the mountains” or faeries or angels; I really liked the idea that the creatures take on an image that the viewer gives them. Shapeshifters, mages and tricksters; they aren’t human and behave differently. This is a truly special book, and a pleasure to read.