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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Apr 2005, 224 pages
Paperback:
Jan 2006, 240 pages
A magical story of loss and renewal and illuminates the bonds and mysteries that connect mother and daughter, sister and brother, woman and man.
From the bestselling author of Practical Magic, an enthralling tale of a woman struck by lightning, who finds her frozen heart suddenly burning Be careful what you wish for. A woman touched by tragedy as a child lives a quiet life, keeping others at a distance. She wants it that way. Then she utters an idle wish and, while standing in her house, is struck by lightning. But she survives. Now the chill in her spirit starts to have physical manifestations. She feels frozen from the inside out, and everything red looks colorless. Hearing of another lightning strike survivor - a man who was dead for forty minutes before reawakening - she goes in search of him. He is her perfect opposite, a man whose breath can boil water and whose touch scorches. As an affair begins between them, both hide dangerous secrets-the incidents that turned one to ice and the other to fire. Alice Hoffman has written a magical story of loss and renewal and illuminates the bonds and mysteries that connect mother and daughter, sister and brother, woman and man.
Chapter One
Snow
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR. I KNOW that for a fact. Wishes are
brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they're
spoken and you can never take them back. They bruise and bake and come
back to haunt you. I've made far too many wishes in my lifetime, the
first when I was eight years old. Not the sort of wish for ice cream or
a party dress or long blond hair; no. The other sort, the kind that
rattles your bones, then sits in the back of your throat, a greedy red toad that chokes you until you say it
aloud. The kind that could change your life in an instant, before you
have time to wish you could take it back.
I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but don't all stories
begin this way? The stranger who comes to town and wreaks havoc. The man
who stumbles off a cliff on his wedding day. The woman who goes to look ...
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