The Book of Magic: A novel
Alice Hoffman
Simon & Schuster
The Owens family have magic in their blood. They also bear an ancient curse. All Owens who fall in love are doomed to suffer the loss of the one they give their heart to. When Kylie Owens decides Gideon Barnes is the man for her he’s hit by a car and lapses into a coma. Kylie was unaware of her inherited gift for magic. Upset at her relatives for trying to protect her from the curse, in an attempt to save Gideon she sets off alone on a quest for her English roots. It’s then that three generations of Owens women decide enough is enough: the curse must be broken for good.
… an elegant and moving story of family ties, love, and the depths of true commitment.
In France they recover a long-lost member of the family, a man the world thought dead for decades. With his help they trace Kylie to London where they enlist the aid of an English ally, a man with his own reasons to love and fear magic. Learning Kylie has gone to the Owens’ ancestral town of Thornfield they follow to find that in her desperation she’s sought help from the one man she should never have approached. Tom Lockland, the descendant of the man who’d brought down the curse, is sour and resentful at the scorn dished out by the townsfolk. He seeks revenge on them all. Kylie might be the means to do it. The Owens’ Unnamed Arts confront the dark “left-handed magic” in a battle to end the curse and prevent another. Only love and a willingness to sacrifice all will end the curse, but who among them will make that bargain?
The Book of Magic brings an end to the Owens family’s adventures in an elegant and moving story of family ties, love, and the depths of true commitment.
