I was reminded, in a way, of Tolkien’s Gollum, the battle between the darkness and the light within a single being. That he is able to find enchantment in this darkest of situations is breathtaking. He is also able to perceive feelings and needs in others, observing from his isolation, and offering a bit of narrator omniscience. He visualizes his very sweat rising to join the atmosphere and raining down on China. He sees small men with hammers in the walls (a particularly Lovecraftian notion) and flibber-gibbets, beings who feed on the warmth of death itself. The rumblings of tectonic activity become golden horses racing underground. And he interprets his surroundings through a magical lens. In reading, he has the freedom his external circumstances preclude. I want to tell you while I still have time, before they close the black curtain and I take my final bow. The most wonderful enchanted things happen here-the most enchanted things you can imagine.

In the death row of a stone prison somewhere in America, a nameless inmate, entombed in a lightless dungeon, has constructed a fantastical appreciation for the world he inhabits, bringing a glorious light into his Stygian darkness. There are three primary and several very strongly written secondary characters whose stories are interwoven. She has written a novel about identity, understanding, the roots of crime, the reality of prison life, the possibility for redemption, and the ability of people to use imagination to rise beyond the purely material to the transcendent. Rene Denfeld, the author of The Enchanted has the heart of a warrior and the soul of a poet. What matters in prison is not who you are but what you want to become.

The enchanted by rene denfeld