A Winter's Tale

As I'm writing this, I'm sitting in a cozy nook of my New York City apartment, hot tea in hand, watching the snow fall steadily outside my window.

Although I'm supposed to be working from home (and I am!), I can't help wanting to drop everything and pick up a particular book that I know for me would turn this ordinary snow day into something infinitely more magical.

The book of which I'm thinking is Winter's Tale, by Mark Helprin. It's a 750-page tale of heroism and fantasy, set in a wintry Manhattan where the rivers are frozen solid, the streets are paved with snow and the inhabitants of the city skate, sleigh and ski their way around. Though the book begins at the turn of the 19th century and finishes at the turn of the 20th, the author weaves it in such a way as to make it timeless.

The focal point of this complex story is a love so powerful that it transcends time and thwarts death. It starts with the improbable love story of a poor Irish burglar and a wealthy young woman dying of tuberculosis at the end of the 19th century. Her death inspires a series of magical events that takes the living, breathing city and all its inhabitants and brings it closer to the Divine.

My father gave me a copy of this book a few years ago with a glowing recommendation. He confessed that he had read it about fifteen years earlier, during the painful months my grandmother (his mother) lay dying in a hospital bed. Day after day, he would sit by the bedside and read it aloud to her, praying that the magic of the story could somehow work a miracle.

Though she did not recover, I suppose it did work a miracle. She died peacefully and without pain from a devastating disease, knowing that her son loved her dearly. Time did stop...long enough for mother and son to forge an eternal bond they had not previously been able to make.

I suppose too that it is easy to forget that there is Divine magic in real life, and in the real New York City, where I'm constantly running from obligation to obligation with tunnel vision. If I just give myself the chance to pause my timeline and look out the window at my beautiful snow-covered neighborhood, I'd see it right there in front of my eyes.

Winter's Tale is a beautiful story that will inspire you to cherish every moment and recognize the magic in your own life. I can't recommend it enough.

—Jessica Bloustein